An Empty Room
by jeeno2
Summary: The War of the Five Kings is over. Arya Stark, the unofficial Lady Stark at the former Winterfell, learns how to live again. Arya/Gendry.
1. Chapter 1

_a/n: My first multi-chapter fic for this fandom. I hope you enjoy. _

* * *

They expected the journey north to take less than a fortnight.

But with winter is in its third full year now and no end in sight, the snows north of the Riverlands lie deep. With the northern winds whipping at their faces and thick wet snow clinging to the treads of their boots, it's taken their small party nearly twice as long as it would have during summer to reach the ruins of Winterfell.

They're all grateful that Gendry Waters is so proficient with bow and arrow. Were he not, their provisions would have run out weeks ago. As loathe as some initially were to take King Robert's bastard son with them to where the Dragon Queen fights what they're now told is the _real _enemy, the first night that saw them with hot rabbit stew in their bellies changed their minds about Waters with a quickness.

As they finally approach the lands of the once great House Stark Gendry tugs sharply on the reins of his mottled gray mare. She gives an answering whinny and comes to a halt.

The unofficial head of their party – the old man they call The Commander, more as a jape than for any legitimate reason – stops his horse as well and turns to face him.

He eyes Gendry dubiously. "Waters?" he grunts, clearly displeased that they've stopped. "What is it?"

Gendry swallows hard and steels his nerves, working up the courage to ask the question that's been keeping him up at night ever since leaving the relative warmth of Harrenhal all those weeks ago.

Gendry opens his mouth, to finally get it out in the open. But in the end he finds he can't.

"You… uh… sure we're welcome here?" he asks instead.

The Commander rubs his chin a moment as if in thought. Then he shrugs. "You saw that raven, boy. The Lady Stark is askin' all able-bodied Westerosi that's survived the war to come join her brother's war efforts north of the Wall." He shrugs again. "In exchange, she provides food and drink for a fortnight. And medicine too, insofar's she's got it. Which, as you know, some of us quite direly need." He chortles, then claps Gendry on the back. "Can't see why she'd turn even the likes of us away, aye? There's so few of us left."

With that, The Commander turns his horse around, signaling the end of the conversation. He puts his spurs to his horse and she runs off at a gallop, closing the distance between them and the men who've gone on ahead.

But Gendry waits behind.

Gendry knows there's no "Lady Stark" anymore. Not really. There hasn't been a proper Lady Stark since the Lannisters made off with the heads of the poor King in the North and his lady mother at the Frey wedding. The Commander undoubtedly knows this as well, and is only using the obsolete title out of respect for the old days, and for what the Starks once represented to the Realm.

But The Commander's words, meaningless as they are, stir up memories in Gendry that he'd long ago stopped letting himself think about. Memories of a perpetually hungry belly. Of terror. And worst of all, memories of _feelings_ – hot, conflicted feelings to which he knew, even as a boy, he had no right.

Coming north with these men had been the right decision, Gendry reminds himself. There is nothing for him in the southron lands anymore. Nothing for anyone, really, Queen Danaerys' dragons having laid waste to nearly everything the Lannisters left untouched during the war. When The Commander found him in that Harrenhal tavern two months ago, half in his cups, he agreed he might as well go north along with everyone else to see this thing through to some sort of end.

It wasn't as if he had anything else he needed to be doing.

He's a man grown now, with twenty-one name days behind him. But now that they are here, on the cusp of the great abyss that lies on the other side of the Wall, Gendry feels all of fifteen again. Tired, hungry… and confused.

But there's nothing to be done about that. Because, at last, they've arrived at Winterfell.

Gendry sighs, and puts his spurs to his own horse. As he trots off to join the others, and the rocky outcroppings of the ruined Winterfell begin to peek through the drifting piles of snow, he wonders, nervously, if Arya still has that old sword made from Valyrian steel. And if she's had occasion over the years to use it.

He supposes he'll find out soon enough.


	2. The Volunteer

_a/n: Thank you so much for reading. If you'd like to find me on tumblr, where I blog about ASoIaF, GoT, cats, and other assorted randomness, you can find me there as jeeno2. :)_

* * *

Rickon Stark comes running over to Arya, seated at the kitchen table and peeling potatoes, when the raven appears in their window.

_Must be a letter_, she muses. Rickon confirms it when he appears at her side a moment later, parchment in hand.

"Who's it from?" Arya asks, setting down the paring knife she'd been working with and wiping her hands on her apron.

Rickon shrugs. "Dunno. It's sealed," he says, handing it over.

According to custom in the days when there was still a House Stark, Rickon, as the oldest surviving trueborn son of Eddard Stark, should be the one opening letters delivered by ravens. Not her. After all, in those days he would have been Lord of Winterfell, and she would have been but his sister.

But the days of House Stark are long gone, vanished with the fall of an axe and the smoke from a dragon's flame. It is Arya, not Rickon, who runs things in what was once Winterfell.

In truth their arrangement suits them both just fine.

Arya glances at the parchment's seal and recognizes it at once as the one Jon uses when sending communications on behalf of the former Night's Watch. And on behalf of the Dragon Queen. She runs her fingers lightly over the molten black wax, biting her lip.

She normally welcomes messages from Jon. There were too many years in which she had no word from him at all, and no idea whether he fared ill or well, or whether he was alive or dead.

But she knows what this particular letter is likely about. And she knows her response to it will not be what either Jon, or the Queen, want to hear.

However, Arya also knows there's nothing to be done for it. Their survival depends on them doing exactly what the Queen bids of them now. The time for rebellion is over.

Taking a deep breath and preparing herself, Arya snaps the seal with her knife and unrolls the parchment. She recognizes Jon's neat, concise script immediately and smiles.

_My dear Arya,_

_I hope this letter finds you, Rickon, and Sansa faring very well._

Arya glances up at her youngest brother, sitting in front of their partially rebuilt hearth, brushing Shaggydog with a pinecone and giving him treats. She thinks of Sansa upstairs, practically bedridden - but here, alive, and healthy in the ways that matter.

Arya figures they're doing about as well as could be hoped for, really. After everything.

Shrugging to herself, Arya bends again to the parchment in her hands and resumes reading.

_As you know, the war beyond the Wall is becoming a much more protracted battle than we'd originally planned for. The Queen's dragons have great impact on the wights we encounter, of course. But unfortunately, they still have little effect on the White Walkers themselves. The creatures remain largely impervious to fire, and dragons obviously cannot wield the obsidian blades that we know can slay them. _

_Only men can do that._

Arya cannot help but roll her eyes. So the great Dragon Queen - who appeared out of nowhere last year, and promised salvation even as her dragons scorched every last inch of Westeros - cannot save them after all.

What a surprise.

_I write to remind you that our need for men remains as desperate as ever. The Queen and I continue to send ravens to every corner of the Realm to alert all survivors to our plight, and we hope that our call will not go unanswered. _

_My sweet Arya, I know that the sacrifice we ask of you is great. But please: continue to offer Winterfell as a way station for the men who come to you swearing a desire to fight in this great war. Winterfell, despite its present condition, remains a strategically important location, as all who travel to the Wall must pass either nearby or directly through it._

_The Queen has a nearly limitless supply of gold, and the former Night's Watch's gold remains at your disposal as well. At your earliest convenience, please write to us and let us know how much gold you require to continue feeding and healing the men who come to Winterfell's doors on their way to the Wall._

_It remains my greatest wish that someday, we will be all together at a fully rebuilt Winterfell – you, me, Sansa, and Rickon – and that together, we will be a family once more. But before that can happen, this great enemy must be defeated. Otherwise we will all be dead before this endless winter is over._

_Yours, always,_

_- Jon_

Arya reads the letter through a second time, and then a third. Just like all of Jon's letters now, she cannot tell whether he wrote this because he believes the war beyond the Wall is something they can actually win or whether he is only there, and writing to her, under extreme duress from the Queen.

In the end, all that stops Arya from crumpling the parchment and tossing it into the flames is that regardless of the circumstances under which it was written, the letter was clearly written by Jon's own hand. She has precious little left to her by which to remember family. Arya clings to all that remains like a babe clings to her mother's skirts.

As for the letter's contents, she does not doubt that Jon and the Queen are making every effort to reach everyone who might be inclined to help in their fight. Regardless, the flow of men to and through Winterfell since this campaign began six moons ago has never grown much beyond a trickle. Now, it has all but dried up. In the past fortnight they have sheltered, clothed, and fed a total of four individuals on their way to the Wall. Old men and young, green boys who stank of summer. Hopeless creatures with nothing left to lose, every single one of them, with hungry bellies and lifeless eyes.

Arya doesn't know if the Queen's appeals are simply falling on deaf ears or if there truly is nobody left alive to hear them. Either way, Arya is convinced that their efforts to rally the surviving Westerosi to help fight the great evil beyond the Wall are utterly futile.

But Arya, Rickon, and Sansa are only eating right now because of the Queen's largesse. Arya will do whatever it takes to keep her family safe. She can't do anything else.

And so she closes her mind, the way she learned to do so well during her time across the narrow sea. She slowly walks to the bureau by the hearth and grabs a quill and bit of parchment.

She brings them back with her to the table and begins to write.

Arya tells Jon exactly how much gold she will need to feed herself, Rickon, Sansa, and the men presently staying in their stable until they are strong enough to continue north, for the next moon's turn.

Jon didn't ask her to predict how many men she expects will come through Winterfell in the coming months. And she does not volunteer that information in her letter. Jon and the Queen are both exceptionally clever, however, and she's certain that the paltry sum she is asking for now will tell them everything they really want to know.

Arya has no idea whether the Queen will allow Jon to read this letter privately. She suspects, however, that she will not. Arya doesn't add any personal details about herself or Rickon, and of course leaves out anything having to do with Sansa. She scrawls her signature on the bottom of the parchment, rolls it up, and sends it off with the waiting raven.

"Rickon," she calls out to her brother. "Can you bring Jon's letter up to Sansa? I'm guessing she'd like to see it."

She reaches out and hands him Jon's note. Rickon dutifully climbs the stairs two at a time towards Sansa's bedroom.

That business attended to, Arya returns to the table and continues peeling potatoes for tonight's supper.

* * *

That night is an especially bad one for her.

But then, nights are almost always difficult for Arya now. They have been ever since she returned from Braavos two years ago, blind and half-mad from delusions, hunger, and fear.

She rarely gets a full night's rest anymore. Instead, she spends most nights in a bizarre half-waking state in which she simultaneously prowls the forest, the taste of her enemies' blood fresh in her mouth, and tosses and turns restlessly in her bed.

Tonight her wolf dreams are filled with another scent. Another taste. The half-forgotten smell of man fills her senses for the first time in recent memory. It torments both her hunting wolf form and her sleeping human form in a way she cannot understand but which is no less real for that.

She hears herself howl in frustration and rage. Her pack – always with her, always, even when she was _no one_ – joins in. Their mighty noise frightens the few small forest animals that remain after the dragons' fiery siege. The rabbits and ferrets and mice scatter in all directions, mere dust mites on the wind.

The men – all unfamiliar men, mostly, except for one, the one with the scent she almost remembers but cannot quite place – also run in fear. But their, _his_, scent remains. It hangs heavy in the air, on her fur, in her nightclothes.

Arya is suddenly fully awake in the middle of the night and bolts upright in her narrow bed. Not her childhood bed; that was burned to ash years ago, when the Ironborn came and before the seasons changed. But she is in her bed nonetheless. In Winterfell.

For a long moment Arya is incapable of doing anything but willing her breathing and her racing heart to slow.

Eventually, they do. She listens closely to see if she made any noise while sleeping that may have frightened poor Rickon. She often does. If she woke him with her howling he will call for her soon, terrified.

But she hears nothing.

She thanks the Seven for this small mercy before lying back down to attempt another hour or two of fitful rest.

* * *

When Gendry and his companions arrive at Winterfell's front gate later that morning, they are greeted by a young boy who seems very surprised to see them.

He looks so like the "boy" Gendry met years ago when he fled Kings Landing that he thinks, at first, that he is seeing a ghost.

But then this boy speaks, and his voice bears the scratchy telltale signs of a boy on the cusp of manhood. Gendry relaxes the fists he hadn't realized he'd been making and takes a deep breath, trying to calm himself.

Realizing that he isn't _her_, Gendry is able to pay attention to what the boy – her brother? a cousin? – is saying to them.

"The lot that's sleeping here now will be headed north in another day or so," he says, gesturing to two old men lying listlessly on cots within the stable where they're standing. The old men's eyes are open but Gendry cannot tell whether or not they are actually awake.

Unsettled by the sight of them, Gendry looks away and towards the boy again.

"Until these two clear out you'll have to share space with them. I'm sorry, sers."

Gendry flinches a little at the designation. He knows the boy is calling them _sers_ only out of respect. But Gendry is no true knight, and never has been.

How very different his life might have gone had he been one, he thinks bitterly.

The men in Gendry's party grumble a bit under their breaths after the boy has finished speaking. During their long journey, the man called Whiskey assured the others that they'd be staying within Winterfell itself while here. Gendry knew that was never going to happen. Survivors of a once-great House would never allow lowborn men like them to sleep and dine among them.

The world as they'd known it may have ended, but some things will never change.

Gendry's companions are nonetheless clearly disappointed that instead of dining at the former Winterfell tonight they'll be sleeping amongst pigs and fleas. Their host doesn't look surprised by their reaction; perhaps they're not the only ones he's greeted here who've had unrealistic expectations.

But as their grumbling gets louder, and becomes laced with oaths and profanities, the boy glances over his shoulder several times towards his ruined home. As if trying to determine the cleanest path for escape should one become necessary.

"The stable will be fine. And we are used to sharing small spaces," Gendry tells him in an attempt to reassure, loudly enough to be heard over his companions. The boy's eyes snap to his and his entire body seems to relax.

"Is there… anything we can do for you and your family while we're here?" Gendry continues.

The boy looks confused, as if he doesn't understand the question. "Anything you can do?" he repeats, slowly.

Gendry nods. "You'll be housing us for a fortnight, feeding us and keeping us warm in the dead of winter. Not all of us are in bad shape, and not all of us are in need of a rest before continuing north."

Gendry wills himself not to glance at the two old men lying prone, face up but unseeing, in the stable, but he does it anyway. He winces inwardly at his rudeness. Fortunately the boy pretends not to have noticed.

Gendry clears his throat and continues. "To be honest, Lord Stark –"

"I'm not Lord Stark," the boy insists.

But Gendry pays him no mind.

"To be honest, it's been so long since I've been had work that I don't know what to do with myself." And it's the truth. The callouses Gendry has had on his hands ever since he can remember are disappearing. His hands no longer feel like his own. It's unnerving.

"The Wall's not expecting us for a while, and I just thought..." Gendry continues, then trails off. Out of the corner of his eye, Gendry notices that his companions have turned their backs on this conversation. They clearly don't mind spending the next fortnight being fed and housed by the surviving Starks, whiling away the hours while waiting to be sent on to whatever lies north of the Wall.

The boy looks surprised, as if Gendry's offer is so out of the ordinary he doesn't know how to process it.

"Well, kind ser. As I'm sure you already know, our house is ruined," the boy says, slowly and very quietly. "And the rebuilding has been… very slow, with just me and my sisters here."

Gendry nods, listening. But try as he might, he cannot ignore the slight dizziness that overtakes him when the boy mentions his sisters. Gendry reaches out a hand and grabs on to one of the stable's wooden beams for support.

_She's here, then. In the house._

"I'm certain we can think of something for you to help us with," the boy continues. He nods and the barest hint of a smile plays on his lips. "And… I thank you. This wasn't part of the arrangement. It goes well above what the Queen asks for in return for our housing you."

"Not at all," Gendry says with what he hopes looks like a dismissive wave of his hand rather than a nervous spasm. "I like to be useful. It's been so long," he admits, quietly. "And you are giving us much, here. Let us repay you in this way."

The boy gives Gendry a broad smile.

"I shall let my sister Arya know that you have arrived, sers," he says. "Please – do make yourselves as comfortable as you can. One of us will be out later with supper for all of you."

* * *

After Rickon and Arya have their dinner that night, and Arya brings Sansa a plate of food that she knows without having to ask will remain untouched, Rickon tells Arya what the new has arrival offered to do for them.

"Are you certain?" she asks, surprised. This has never happened before.

"Absolutely," Rickon assures her. "He made himself very clear."

Without further ado, Arya makes a list of everything that still needs repair at Winterfell. She refuses to cry as she does it. She is no longer a foolish young girl, and this is a great opportunity, she tells herself. Not an excuse for wallowing.

In the years following the sacking of Winterfell, the great house was slowly rebuilt by various of Ned Stark's devoted bannermen. Some of the very same men who found Arya wandering through the woods after her return to Westeros two years ago, brought her home, and put her mind and her eyes to rights again.

Given that the Realm was still being torn asunder by horrible war, the repairs to Winterfell were of necessity done in a very piecemeal fashion. Much has been accomplished since Theon Greyjoy's betrayal but Winterfell is still, even after all this time, livable only in the loosest sense of the word.

Only certain sections of the roof are intact, and as such their family is confined to a very small number of rooms. In truth, even sleeping inside those few rooms is not much warmer than sleeping in the stable. She and Rickon quickly decide that roof repair will be the first thing they ask this generous man to help them with.

"We should pay him for it," Arya muses, chewing on the end of her quill. "This is more than what the Queen has asked of him."

"Do we have gold to spare?" Rickon asks.

Arya laughs at that.

"My sweet brother," she begins. She reaches out and squeezes his shoulder. "The Queen has given us enough money to feed a hundred strong men for an entire month."

Rickon says nothing in response to that. But he doesn't need to. He knows as well as Arya does that they haven't seen a hundred men in total in the six months since the war north of the Wall began.

"He may not take the gold," Rickon says. "He seemed eager to just be doing something with his time."

Arya rolls her eyes at her brother. How can he be so naïve, still, after all that they've seen and survived?

"Of course he'll take it, Rickon," she tells him. She tries to keep her voice from taking on the sharp edge it often acquires when she's frustrated, but she isn't sure whether she's managed it. "He's a man, isn't he?"

"Yes, he is," Rickon admits. "And a strong man too, from the looks of him. I think he'll be able to help us quite a lot while he's here."

This pleases Arya a great deal.

"I think this is the first good news we've had in a very long time," she says, smiling.

Rickon smiles back at her and helps himself to another plate of potatoes.

* * *

It's always Arya's job to see that the men they're hosting get their supper.

After she washes their own dinner dishes and puts them away, she fills a large tureen with potatoes and a ham she'd been saving for next week. Rickon told her that five new men arrived today. That, plus the two they were already housing, means there are seven extra mouths to feed tonight. She figures she and her siblings can have ham some other time.

The harsh winds from the north are picking up again tonight. Arya doesn't need to go outside to know this; she can feel it inside her drafty house and in her bones. She dresses as warmly as she can before going out to the stable, donning her two warmest hats and her best gloves – the ones that keep out the chill even when the temperatures drop to levels Old Nan never could have imagined.

It's a very short walk from their front door to the stable. But the snow is blowing fiercely and sharp icy crystals of it sting her eyes and her nose. She curses herself for forgetting to wear her woolen scarf as she gives a courtesy knock on the stable door.

When nobody responds, she pries it open herself.

There is no lantern inside, but from the embers of the fire in the corner she can make out seven shapeless, sleeping bundles sharing the six cots she and Rickon have set up for visitors.

The sun set not two hours ago, and Arya is surprised to see the five new arrivals asleep already. Especially given how robust Rickon told her several of the new men appeared. But then, they traveled a very long distance these past few weeks and must be utterly exhausted, she muses.

Arya glances towards the cot along the far wall that two men are sharing. The flimsy thing is practically bursting at the seams, carrying, as it is, so much more weight than it was designed for. Arya decides that she and Rickon should put together a few extra cots on the morrow, on the remote chance they ever shelter more than six men at a time again.

As she puts the covered food down in front of the door and turns to leave for the night, a man clears his throat behind her.

"Thank you, m'lady."

Arya turns around towards the hoarse whisper. She peers into the darkness and sees one of the two men sharing the cot sitting up. She can't make out his face in the gloom, but she can see his silhouette illuminated from behind by the fire's glowing embers.

He looks big to her. Much larger than most of the men and boys who've come this way over the past six months. She wonders if this is the man who offered to help repair the house earlier today, and she hopes that he is.

"Not at all, ser," she says back. "This is part of your compensation from the Queen for service to the Realm."

"Still," he whispers, apparently not wanting to wake his companions. He coughs quietly into his hand. "It's been a very long time since any of us has been able to sleep indoors or have food that smells so good. I'm... appreciative, is all."

Arya doesn't know what to say in response to this.

"Well… I'm only doing as I've been bid. And I'm no cook." She puts her hand on the door, about to leave. "But I hope you enjoy the food all the same."

"I will, m'lady," the man tells her. "I'm certain of it."

"There's no need to call me that," she tells him, more sharply than she'd intended. "I'm no lady anymore, if ever I really was one to begin with. I'm just Arya Stark."

The man doesn't respond for a long moment. He cracks his knuckles against his knee, and she watches as he runs his hands through his hair.

"All right," he says. "Arya Stark, then." He's still whispering, but something about the way he says her name - solemnly; reverently, even; almost as if his mouth is caressing the words before they leave his lips - causes an unfamiliar shiver to go down Arya's spine.

And then without another word to her, the man lies back down on his cot and tries to get comfortable.

As Arya hurries back to the house, blowing snow burning her eyes and her nose, she tries, and fails, to remember the last time they had a guest here who'd been so polite


	3. Surprises

_a/n: I should have mentioned earlier that this story will follow book!canon, rather than show!canon, in places where they diverge. Specifically with regard to how Arya and Gendry came to be separated as teenagers._

_Additionally, this story is also on AO3 for those who would prefer to read it there. _

_Thanks so much for reading. It means a lot to me. :)_

* * *

Arya can hear Sansa rustling around in her room very early the next morning.

This surprises her. Today is the first time Sansa has woken before her or Rickon since she returned to Winterfell.

Arya notes the feeble rays of light streaming through her bedroom window and figures it's only just past dawn. Arya slept terribly again last night and is reluctant to leave the relative warmth of her own bed so early. She yawns and decides she doesn't need to wake yet just because Sansa has.

Immediately at peace with that decision, Arya burrows further under her down blankets. She listens to the soft tread of her sister's footsteps as she pads down the hallway and walks slowly downstairs.

Sansa's gait sounds unsteady this morning. Tentative. So unlike the regal way she carried herself when they were children.

But at least she's out of bed, Arya muses.

It's the first time that's happened in three days.

* * *

Sansa came home to them roughly three weeks ago, delirious with fever and in the middle of the worst blizzard Winterfell had seen in over a year.

She was unable to tell them how long she'd been traveling. "A long time," was all she'd said when pressed. To this day Arya has no idea how Sansa managed the journey, alone as she was, in the middle of the winter, and in her condition.

She'd come from The Vale, she'd told them, which shocked Arya and Rickon both. News of their aunt Lysa's death reached them years ago, but Arya had heard nothing about Sansa being there when it happened.

She'd heard nothing about Sansa at all, in fact, since the day their father was killed. Until now.

When Arya asked her if she was quite _certain_ that she'd just come from The Vale, Sansa turned to look at her with an expression Arya had only ever seen before on the faces of the very elderly and infirm. People on the very cusp of leaving this plane of existence and who view death not as something to be feared, but rather a welcome respite.

"Yes," Sansa aid simply. "Quite certain."

She closed her eyes after that.

She didn't open them again for another two days.

* * *

It didn't take Arya and Rickon long to realize that something was very wrong with Sansa beyond what good sleep and hot food could cure.

Arya figured out what it was shortly after Sansa woke up from her two day sleep, her fever broken but her eyes still dull and lifeless. Sansa was saying very little to either of them, but that didn't matter. Even days after she arrived, Sansa seemed incapable of staying awake for more than a few hours at a time. On the rare occasions when she left her bed it was only to eat a few small bites of food or to vomit into her chamber pot.

And that told Arya everything she needed to know.

Arya was no mother herself, of course. And she had only the faintest memories of her lady mother's pregnancies with Bran and Rickon. But growing up a girl in a household full of female servants exposed her to all sorts of information.

Arya suspected she wouldn't have been better equipped to diagnose what was wrong with Sansa if she'd been a midwife herself.

"Don't tell Rickon," Sansa whispered hoarsely to Arya the morning Arya confronted her and, as kindly as she could, told Sansa that she didn't need to hide her secret anymore. The older girl had been on her knees after spending the past ten minutes in a violent battle with the contents of her stomach, her eyes bloodshot and her face ghostly pale.

The look on Sansa's face when she asked her to protect her secret broke Arya's heart.

"Please. He's young, he won't understand," Sansa begged.

"We need to tell him _something_," Arya whispered urgently. Rickon, being a young boy, hadn't deduced what Arya had. But he was no less concerned about his oldest sister and deserved to have his mind put at ease.

"All right," Sansa murmured, nodding her head in agreement and closing her eyes. She slowly climbed into her bed and pulled the covers up over her head.

"Tell him something. Just not the truth. Please." Sasnsa shook her head back and forth, looking more forlorn than Arya had ever seen her. "Not yet."

Arya's own head was spinning with questions. How, and where, did this happen to her? Who was the father? But Sansa's eyes were closed again, and Arya decided her questions could wait.

Not knowing what else to tell Rickon, Arya tried to convince him that Sansa had caught a rare virus found only in the Eyrie.

"I looked it up in some of Maester Luwin's old books," she told him over dinner that night, her mouth full of mashed potatoes. "It's not fatal, or even very serious. She should be right as rain again in a few weeks."

Rickon didn't seem to quite believe Arya, but at least it got him to stop asking questions.

* * *

"The babe is Jon's," Sansa told Arya very quietly one morning a few days later. "And Arya… Jon's not our brother."

Arya had been darning a pair of Rickon's socks by the hearth when Sansa unexpectedly came downstairs and made this announcement. She looked up at her older sister in utter shock. Sansa, for her part, was looking straight at Arya, resolute, standing in front of the bannister, one hand clutching the railing for support.

Arya was only vaguely aware that her jaw was hanging open and that she'd dropped her needle onto the floor. She wouldn't have been more surprised if Sansa had just announced that she'd sprouted wings and learned to fly.

"Sansa…" Arya began, spluttering. She opened and shut her mouth a few times, then shook her head, trying to clear it.

Sansa's eyes began to well with tears. She wiped them away with the back of her hand. "When the Queen ordered Jon to rejoin her north of the Wall, he begged me to stay at The Vale while he was gone because of its natural protections." She crossed the room and sat down on the chair next to Arya's, tucking her legs underneath her. Her posture reminded Arya irresistibly of Sansa as a very young girl, and for half a moment Arya entirely forgot where they were.

"Jon said this would likely be a long war," Sansa continued, snapping Arya out of her reverie and bringing her back to the present. "And one that might extend quite a ways south of the Wall before it's over. Especially… well. Especially if we lose."

Arya said nothing in response to any of this. Sansa clearly looked as though she had more she wanted to say, but Arya, still reeling from the shock of her revelations, wanted Sansa to be able to tell it in her own time.

"And I'd planned to stay in The Vale, Arya. I did. But then one moon's turn after Jon left..." Sansa continued, then trailed off. Her eyes filled with tears again and she looked down at her still-flat stomach. She covered it protectively with her hands.

"When the woods witch told me the news, I couldn't stay there anymore. I just couldn't. Too many horrible things happened to me in The Vale for me to bear staying there, all alone, with a babe on the way."

Arya thought for a moment that Sansa was about to tell her what those horrible things were. But she didn't.

"There were rumors flying about the Eyrie that you and Rickon were back at Winterfell, and alive," Sansa said instead after a very long moment. "I had to find out for myself."

"Does Jon know?" Arya asked quietly. "That you're with child? That you're here?"

Sansa shook her head in the negative. "I'm quite certain the Queen sees all his letters before he does. If she knew about a baby, she'd use it against him."

Arya didn't understand how, or why, the Queen would use a baby against Jon. But she didn't voice her confusion to Sansa.

"Fair enough," Arya said, nodding, pretending to understand Sansa's meaning. "But you should at least let Jon know you are here. In case he wants to send you a raven or... or, just in case."

Sansa agreed that this was a sensible plan. They decided that in Arya's next message to the Wall, she would let Jon know Sansa was here.

There was still so much Arya wanted to know from her sister. About how she and Jon came together; about what happened to Sansa at The Vale; how she came to be at The Vale of all places in the first place. Arya opened her mouth to begin asking these questions, but Sansa's eyes were beginning to droop again, clearly exhausted from the exertion required to tell Arya everything she just had.

Arya decided that most of her questions could wait. But there was one thing she needed to know immediately.

"Sansa," she began, quietly. She took one of her sister's hands in hers and gave it a squeeze. "About Jon. How… how do you know he's not our brother?" Arya couldn't wrap her mind around it. Their father had always insisted he was Jon's father. Anyone who might have had information about Jon's mother must be long dead by now.

Sansa turned to look at Arya then, and her eyes seemed alight and alive for the first time since she'd returned to Winterfell.

"Jon saw his true parents in the flames," she murmured quietly. "And so did I."

* * *

To Arya's disappointment, she's unable to fall back to sleep after Sansa's early morning rustling wakes her. A few moments after Sansa goes downstairs, dawn arrives in earnest and sunlight pours in through Arya's east-facing window. Apparently taking that as his cue, Winterfell's lone rooster begins squawking in the yard as if his life depended on it, ensuring that no one within a mile of him will be getting rest.

"Blasted bird," Arya swears under her breath, as she grudgingly decides she might as well get out of bed herself. "We should just eat him already and be done with it."

Arya thinks over her day and realizes there's no need to rush this morning. If Sansa is downstairs, she must be feeling reasonably well and in not in need of Arya's care. Rickon mentioned last night that the new men seem healthy; as such, she shouldn't need to play nurse to them today, either.

Additionally, her monthly meeting with the Karstarks to discuss their need for supplies isn't until tomorrow.

Arya stretches languidly as she pulls back her bedcovers and climbs out of bed, deciding to take advantage of her free time today by hunting in what remains of Winterfell's godswood.

Hunting trips rarely yield much anymore. But they give Arya a chance to exercise her muscles, and she enjoys the fresh air and physical activity. And very occasionally she does come home with something unexpected, and she and Rickon end up with an enjoyable feast.

Her mouth watering a little at the thought of roast pheasant tonight, Arya pulls her thick woolen robe tightly around herself and peers out her window.

Rickon's already outside, a large basket of food on one arm, talking animatedly with one of the new men who must have arrived yesterday. The man's back is to Arya, and he's pointing towards the section of Winterfell's roof that Arya and Rickon decided most desperately needs repair.

Arya turns from the window, grinning broadly, as she always does whenever she thinks of the future day when Winterfell will be fully rebuilt. Perhaps that day is not as far off as she once thought.

* * *

The godswood is only a small fraction of what it was in Arya's youth.

After the Ironborn's attack, and then the Lannisters' and the dragons' razing of the entire Realm, all that remains is a little sliver off to the side where only half a thousand trees still stand. Including, incredibly, the old heart tree to which her father used to pray.

Arya comes here often, even though the temperatures in the godswood are particularly frigid, and even though she's never had any use for the Seven or for any other gods. It's a peaceful place - an oasis that somehow endures despite the death and destruction all around them.

The godswood reminds her of her father. It always has. And now, inexplicably, it also reminds her of Bran, her sweet brother who disappeared years ago far north of the Wall. She cannot make sense of it, but she feels Bran's presence beside her, a tangible thing, whenever she walks among these old trees. As if she'd actually be able to reach out and grasp him again in her arms if she could only _see_ him.

After tromping from the castle to the godswood through several inches of newly fallen snow, Arya sits on a fallen log in the center of the wood for nearly an hour. The temperatures are bone-chilling this morning; even colder than they were last night. But she came prepared, and every inch of her is covered in thick layers of fur to keep out the chill.

Arya closes her eyes and does nothing but breathe deeply for most of that hour, thinking mournfully of everyone she has lost. And thinking reverently, gratefully, of those precious few still left to her.

Rickon. Jon, even if he's far away. And now, at last, Sansa.

Arya is eventually interrupted from her meditations by a loud rustling in a nearby bush. She's never considered herself much of a real hunter, but she's good enough after years of taking care of herself on the Kingsroad that she knows, without even needing to look, that a family of grouse is about to make itself her next meal.

Thinking of Syrio Forel and their water dancing lessons from a lifetime ago, Arya rises from her perch as quietly as she can, bow and arrow in hand.

Quick as a viper's strike, she shoots the first grouse that emerges right through the eye. And then one-two-three, she gets her family.

It isn't much, but grouse is Rickon's favorite. She imagines the delighted look on his face when she shows him what she's caught today and she smiles.

It doesn't take much longer for the chill to begin settling in her bones. Her many layers of clothing help, but even they can only do so much to protect against the harshest winter anybody still alive can remember.

Arya collects the grouse in a small burlap sack and walks home quickly, contemplating how best to prepare the game for tonight's supper.

* * *

Gendry is standing atop Winterfell's tallest westward facing tower, a hammer in his hand and a bunch of rusty nails in his mouth, when he sees her.

He doesn't even realize it's her at first because his attention is so focused on getting as many wooden planks in place as possible before nightfall. Because tomorrow, he hopes to be working on parts of the roof that aren't halfway to the stars.

After everything Gendry Waters has been through he isn't afraid of much. All the same, he's spent most of today avoiding looking down, and wishing like anything that the Stark boy had picked a task for him that involved both of his feet planted firmly on solid ground.

And so when Gendry sees Arya Stark for the first time in nearly five years (not counting last night, of course, because he couldn't really _see_ her last night), it's only out of the corner of his eye, and he doesn't register what he's seeing. He dimly notes a small bundled shape hurrying out of the godswood west of Winterfell and carries on with his hammering.

As Arya gets closer to the castle, however, and her figure grows larger in Gendry's peripheral vision, he can't help but notice the unique determination of the person's stride; the slope of the shoulders that still, even after all these years, haunt his dreams; and then, finally, the unmistakable shape of her slate-grey eyes, the only part of her that's visible through her furs.

And suddenly he knows without a shadow of a doubt that it's her.

Gendry drops his hammer on his foot at the realization. It's a steel hammer, and it _hurts_, and he mutters an involuntarily oath under his breath.

To his great relief, Arya doesn't seem to hear him – or at least doesn't turn towards him to determine the source of the noise. Barely breathing, Gendry follows Arya with his eyes as she marches straight into the castle with whatever it is she's carrying from the woods.

As a boy, Gendry never used to let himself think of Arya Stark as beautiful. Never used to let himself to think of her at all, really – at first because she was just an irritating boy; then because she was a highborn lady; and then because the thoughts he _would_ have thought about her, if he'd let himself, would have been inappropriate and filthy and wrong.

But despite his best efforts, he still thought about Arya Stark. Endlessly. The entire time they travelled together. And then for a very long time after they parted. There was just something about her that got under his skin that still, to this very day, demands his full attention. Her fire. Her spirit. He doesn't know _what_ it is, but for all the hold it has over him he realizes it probably doesn't even matter what it's called.

Gendry knows he was craven last night when he didn't tell her who he was. More than craven. But he just couldn't do it. He couldn't bring himself to announce his presence and risk – what? He doesn't even know. That she'd throw him out of her stable? He knows that probably wouldn't have happened. Arya is offering her hospitality to him under express order of the Dragon Queen, and it's not likely she would risk angering the merciless Daenaerys Targaryen by turning away an able-bodied potential soldier willing to do battle north of the Wall.

Then again, he has no idea how furious she still is with him for abandoning her for the Brotherhood when they were children. Perhaps to Arya, tossing him out into the bitter cold would be well worth whatever punishment the Dragon Queen might mete out.

After Arya has been out of his line of sight and in the castle for a few minutes Gendry is finally able to concentrate on the task at hand again. He picks up the hammer he dropped and resumes working.

As he pounds nails into the tower that's nearly as old as time itself, Gendry begins to hope - futilely, he suspects - to be able to avoid Arya's notice for the duration of his time at Winterfell.

* * *

And in the end, of course, it is futile.

Just as Gendry's climbing down the complicated series of ladders they must have installed after Bran Stark's infamous fall, he sees Arya emerging from the castle with a great big basket of food on her arm.

He looks left and right, panicking, racking his brains for a place, _any_ place, to hide.

But it's too late. She sees him, standing there by the ladders, clutching his hammer stupidly in his hands.

Gendry keeps his eyes trained on the ground by his feet, willing the earth to swallow him up, cursing himself for making this trip north in the first place. He realizes, a full month too late, that coming here might actually have been the second biggest mistake of his life.

He closes his eyes, but he can still feel hers on him. He swallows audibly, the silence between them stretching interminably, but he doesn't dare be the one to break it.

In the end, she does.

"Gendry," she says simply. Not a question, and not an endearment. Just a statement of fact.

He gathers his courage and opens his eyes to look at her.

She's standing not five feet away from him, her hood pushed back and her hair down. She's placed the basket she was carrying on the ground and her arms are folded tightly across her chest. He scrutinizes her face – gods, her face, her _face_, seven hells she's grown into the fieriest, most beautiful woman he's ever seen in his life – for some clue as to what she's thinking in this moment.

But her face – the face he grew so adept at reading when they were children – is inscrutable. Her fierce grey eyes are fixed on his, and her chapped lips are pressed tightly together in a firm line.

Gods what he wouldn't give to know what it all meant.

She doesn't say anything else for a very long moment. She doesn't move a muscle. Until finally, after what might have been hours, she slowly, slowly walks across the yard to where he stands.

Gendry holds his breath as she moves towards him, rooted to the spot. She lifts her right hand slowly towards his face and he lets out a shuddering exhale. He closes his eyes and grits his teeth, willing himself not to act like a fool when she touches him.

Like the crack of a whip, her right hand comes down and slaps his cheek so hard the force of it knocks him backwards.

Gendry grunts in surprise and in actual pain and his eyes fly open.

He sees the back of her retreating form as she runs back into her castle, the basket of food for the men lying, forgotten, on the ground by his feet.


	4. A Wrench in the Plans

Sansa's giving Arya a lecture.

The three of them – Sansa, Rickon, and herself – are seated around the small table in their kitchen, dining on the grouse Arya caught today. Arya's glad that Rickon is as good as he is at dressing game, and that he handled that responsibility this evening. Because with as furious as she is, and in light of her Braavosi training, she knows she probably shouldn't be handling knives just now.

Arya looks up at Sansa, watching her form words with her mouth and gesture with her hands. Arya briefly notes that her sister is actually eating tonight; she must be feeling better than she has in a while.

But as glad as Arya is about that development she decides to stop listening to her. She reaches across the table for another drumstick and stares out the window.

Arya knew dinner tonight would be fraught. Sansa happened to be looking out the front window at the precise moment she slapped Gendry and so she saw the whole thing. For all Sansa knows, Gendry is a perfect stranger. A perfect stranger who's volunteered to help them rebuild their home.

And now Sansa's horrified with her younger sister's behavior.

Arya thinks back on what she and Sansa were like when they were young girls together. "Like oil and water," Old Nan used to say. In spite of herself Arya starts laughing, loudly, when she realizes that despite what they've each been through, this aspect of their relationship appears to be the same as ever.

"Oh shut up, Sansa," Arya manages to say. But only just. She's still laughing, hard, and a moment later there are tears rolling down her cheeks. Sansa starts glaring at her, but that just makes Arya laugh harder, and soon she's doubled over because her stomach hurts from laughing so much.

Arya glances up at Rickon, who's staring at her open-mouthed with a drumstick of his own clutched in his fist. He looks at her like she's lost her mind.

_And perhaps I have_, Arya muses, as she tries to calm herself down. _Perhaps now I'm seeing ghosts._

Sansa gives Arya an arch look from across the table. Arya pinches the bridge of her nose and takes a series of deep breaths, trying to calm down enough to explain.

"Look, Sansa," Arya begins. She picks up her fork and begins absentmindedly pushing bites of food around her plate. "You have no idea who he is, and you're probably thinking I just assaulted a stranger. But I know him."

Sansa folds her arms tightly across her chest and looks at Arya with one eyebrow raised. "You know that incredibly strong, generous man who is helping repair Winterfell even though he's under no obligation to do so?" she asks, sneering a little. Sansa shakes her head and closes her eyes as if she can't even bear the sight of her sister right now.

Arya slams her fist down on the table, suddenly furious with Sansa for being so judgmental without having even half the story.

"Yes. I _know_ him," Arya shouts back. She pushes her chair back from the table abruptly and stands up. "And I nearly got killed half a hundred times because of him!"

Without another word – and as though she truly were ten years old again and Sansa twelve – Arya takes her drumstick and throws it at her sister's head. But she misses her target by a mile. The grouse leg bounces off a spot on the wall two feet to the right of Sansa's chair and lands in a greasy mess on the floor.

Arya vaguely recognizes that both of her siblings are shouting at her now. That only makes her angrier. She throws her napkin down on the table and bolts from the room.

* * *

Until four hours ago, Arya hadn't thought about stupid Gendry Waters in years.

That day, five years ago, when Gendry told her he was staying with the Brotherhood, a proud gleam in his bright blue eyes, something deep inside of her that she didn't even have a name for shattered into pieces. Whatever that part of her had been, it _hurt_ when it broke.

After she left those men she vowed to never think of Gendry again.

Of course, it hadn't been as simple as all that at first. She'd traveled, fought, and hid with Gendry for years, and she'd grown accustomed to his presence. There were times when she'd wake up in the middle of the night and roll over, expecting him to be there beside her just like always. His large, immovable form. His steadiness. His strong arms that would, on increasingly frequent occasions, hold her close if she'd been having a nightmare. His gentle hands, stroking her hair, letting her know without words that everything would be all right.

But after they parted, when she woke up in the night, Gendry wouldn't be there. He wouldn't be anywhere near her at all. The realization was like a slap to her own face each time, and the pain would be unbearable the rest of the night.

It all faded soon enough, though. Arya has been so preoccupied with just trying to stay alive, and sane, for so long that she's simply had no room for thoughts of the big stupid Bull and his juvenile fascination with helmets and swords.

Alone in her room tonight, and for the first time in many years, Arya lets herself imagine what life might have been like if Gendry hadn't left her. He'd been her right hand for so long and always useful in a fight. There's no telling how differently things would have gone had he stayed.

She wouldn't have had to travel with that despicable Hound, for one thing. She certainly would never have traveled to Braavos and experienced true torment at the hands of the Faceless Men.

With Gendry's help, she may have even been able to save her family at the Frey wedding.

And now, after she's spent most of the past five years in hell and come out the other side, battered and bruised on the inside, but mostly intact in spite of everything, Gendry reappears. The look on his face earlier today seemed almost hopeful. Expectant. What the devil did he think she was going to do when she saw him again? _Thank_ him? Tell him she was _glad_ he abandoned her when she needed him most?

Arya begins pacing her room, agitated. She worries at the cuffs of her sleeves with her fingers, trying to think of a way to abide by the Queen's command without having to actually interact with Gendry while he's here.

Eventually, Arya hears hammering on the roof. Rickon said the other four men who arrived yesterday were layabouts, just like all the others they've sheltered. Arya doesn't need to look outside to know that stupid Gendry is back up there, nailing planks into Winterfell's roof.

Something he volunteered to do, and refused compensation for, just because he wanted to be useful.

Arya glances out her bedroom window and sees that it's nearly dusk. That means it will be pitch dark soon. Which, in turn, means Gendry will need to climb down from one of Winterfell's highest towers with no light to guide him.

"Seven hells!" she shouts in frustration.

Arya picks up a glass vase and throws it against the wall of her bedroom as hard as she can, shattering it.

The brittle shards cut into her hands when she sweeps them up later. They make her hands bleed a little. But at least the pain gives her something to focus on besides the incessant sound of hammering on her roof.

* * *

The next morning, Arya wakes with the rooster again, utterly exhausted. Her sleep was fitful again, and full of wolf dreams.

But she forces herself out of bed anyway to prepare for today's teatime meeting with the Karstarks.

Maxim and Aleks Karstark, the only surviving descendants of Ned Stark's bannermen from the days when such designations meant something, are Arya's only regular trading partners. She meets with them once every moon's turn, and sometimes even more frequently than that, depending on her family's need for supplies and the Karstarks' need for gold.

As useful as the Queen's gold is to her, in reality the Starks are far more dependent on the Karstarks for survival than they are on the Queen. The Queen has been generous – but they can't exactly _eat_ her gold.

Given that Winterfell cannot produce its own food, there isn't much else around for them to eat, either. Its fields have lain fallow for years and now, in the middle of this endless winter, they are frozen solid. What stores the Starks managed to ferret away for winter were stolen or burned years ago by the Boltons when they sacked the castle.

The Karstarks, however, have a small hot spring that runs through one corner of their ancestral property. Where Winterfell is barren as a glacier, the Karstarks have ten acres of mostly unfrozen land that they use to grow enough food to survive. In exchange for the Queen's gold Arya receives for sheltering men bound for the Wall, Maxim and Aleks Karstark now share some of their supplies with Arya, Rickon, and Sansa.

There is no one else for the Starks to trade with for hundreds of miles in any direction. If it were not for the Karstarks, Arya knows they'd starve to death in a month.

Arya hates being so reliant on anyone – especially on kin to men who betrayed her brother Robb. For years, she had no one but herself to depend on.

But she also recognizes that now, she has no choice.

* * *

Arya is preparing for this monthly meeting with the Karstarks by going over sums and adding up tallies, and Sansa is washing up their breakfast dishes, when Maxim and Aleks Karstark walk straight into their kitchen without knocking.

This is far earlier in the day than Arya had been expecting them. Neither she nor Sansa are properly dressed to receive male visitors.

"Maxim! Aleks!" Arya says in surprise from her seat at the kitchen table. She pulls her modest house dress around her more tightly and sets the list she'd been working with aside. "We weren't expecting you until teatime."

Maxim Karstark, a young man just a few years older than Sansa with dark brown hair and a beard that he must have begun growing since the last time he was at Winterfell, nods his head politely to the two women.

"I beg your pardon, Lady Stark," he says to Arya, then turns and nods again to Sansa. Both men insist on using the antiquated designation whenever they visit, no matter how often Arya tells them it is unnecessary. "But we have emergency business that takes us to Deepwood Motte this week and we needed to begin today's meeting earlier than is our custom. I apologize for this intrusion, but there was simply no time to send a raven."

Arya nods and motions to the seats across the table from her. "Very well. Please, sit down. I was just drawing up the list of items we will need for the next month."

"And I trust Lady Stark has sufficient gold to cover these items?" Maxim asks, raising one eyebrow questioningly. Arya rolls her eyes, because he knows that she does.

"Of course I do," Arya says dismissively, trying to keep the edge of annoyance out of her voice. "Come. Sit." She points again at the chairs across from her.

Maxim takes one of the two proffered seats and pulls a roll of parchment out of the pocket of his riding cloak. But Aleks waits behind, where Sansa remains standing in front of the wash basin. He's eyeing her in a way that makes Arya's skin crawl.

"Lady Stark," Aleks says to Sansa with a polite bow. "I had not heard you had returned to Winterfell." He gives her a broad grin.

"Y-yes," Sansa says, clearly as discomforted by the look Aleks is giving her as Arya is. "I came home several weeks ago."

"Well, my lady," Aleks continues. He takes one of her hands in his and presses a gentle kiss to the back of it. Arya watches as Sansa freezes, every muscle in her body going rigid. "It is _very_ good to see you again after so many years."

Sansa snatches her hand back from Aleks, and Arya catches Maxim, who is also watching them, try to hide a smile in his palm.

"Thank you, Ser Karstark," Sansa says curtly. She turns her back to him then and faces Arya. "I'll just be upstairs, Arya. If you need me…" she says, trailing off.

"Thank you, Sansa. I won't be long here," Arya replies.

But Sansa is already halfway out of the room before Arya finishes her sentence.

Abandoned, Aleks sighs theatrically and takes the seat next to his brother at the table.

"You know, Lady Stark," Maxim begins. He steeples his hands together and rests his chin on the points of his fingertips. "My brother and I have some, _other_ business we'd like to discuss with you before getting into the matter of hams and potatoes."

Arya looks up from her lists at Maxim. The hair on the back of her neck is suddenly standing on end; she's learned over the years that that's never a good sign. "Yes, Maxim?"

Maxim turns his head and looks at Aleks, who's examining his fingernails.

"Do not take this the wrong way, Lady Stark –"

"_Arya_," she corrects him sternly.

Maxim chuckles a little. "All right. Do not take this the wrong way, _Arya_. But has it ever occurred to you that your little family of three might not be – ah – quite as safe, in these dangerous times, as it might be if you had a man grown living under your roof with you?"

"Or perhaps even two men?" Aleks chimes in, smiling obsequiously.

Arya's stomach sinks at their words. She should have seen this coming months ago.

_I've been such a fool.._.

"Look –"she begins.

But they don't let her finish. "We know that we are not going about this in the traditional way, Arya," Maxim says. "And for that we do apologize."

Arya is unable to keep from rolling her eyes, because Maxim Karstark sounds anything but sorry right now.

"But you see, there's nothing to be done for it," his brother continues for him. He shrugs, then sighs as if frustrated. Though by the half-smile on his face Arya can tell he is anything but. "Our fathers are both long dead. It's up to us now to see to our own matches."

"Gentlemen," Arya says again. "I do believe the three of us are well and truly safe here as we are, seeing as we are miles away from the war beyond the Wall, and from our nearest neighbors as well." She steeples her own hands together, imitating Maxim's earlier posture, and laughs. "The only thing we're in danger of here is boredom, really."

She pauses a moment before continuing. "Or possibly of frostbite. Actually, if you want to keep us safe you could help restore Winterfell for us."

The smiles on the Karstarks' faces vanish in the same instant.

"Arya," Maxim begins. "Be reasonable. You are a woman grown, as is Sansa."

"Oh, well-spotted***," Arya says sarcastically.

Ignoring her jibe, Maxim continues. "There are so few of us left, and it only makes sense for those of us who were allied before the war to come together and –"

"And what?" Arya interrupts, hostility lacing her tone. She folds her arms tightly across her chest and leans back in her chair. "And marry each other? Make babies together?"

Aleks and Maxim exchange glances. "Well… yes. Yes, that was rather what we were thinking," Maxim admits, rubbing the back of his neck.

Arya shakes her head, scoffing.

"I have no intention of ever being anyone's wife, Maxim," she tells him bluntly. "Not ever."

"And do you speak for Sansa as well? Are you acting as her father now too, as well as Lord of Winterfell?" Aleks says, smirking a little.

Arya thinks of her sister's present condition. Of how reverently she touches each letter they get from Jon, no matter what they say. Of how carefully she places each and every one of his letters in a special drawer in her bureau.

"Aleks, you misunderstand me," Arya says, slowly. "I am neither Lord of Winterfell nor the one who arranges marriages for my sister Sansa. I am no one but Arya Stark, and Sansa is her own woman. If you wish to marry her, I invite you to ask her for her hand yourself. However," Arya says, trailing off.

She rubs her chin as she chooses her next words very carefully.

"However, I warn you that she is not likely to give you a different response than the one I just gave you."

The brothers exchange glances.

"All right, Arya," Maxim says. He nods. "In time – as the winter grows longer, as the war becomes more protracted – I believe you will come to see reason. In the meantime, I hope you believe me when I say this won't affect our business dealings going forward."

Arya's eyes widen in shock. It hadn't even occurred to her that her denial of this marriage proposal might affect that aspect of their relationship.

"I… I am glad of it, Maxim," Arya says, trying to recover but her voice shaky. She ruffles through the pages in front of her on the table so she has something to do with her hands. "For we have far more gold than we know what to do with here at Winterfell."

Aleks laughs at her words, but it sounds hollow and false to Arya's ears.

"And we have much need for gold," he says. "So. Let's go over what it is Winterfell requires for the coming month, shall we."

* * *

After the Karstarks leave, Arya is so irritated that Sansa urges her to go for a walk to clear her head.

"Go out the back way if you like," she suggests quietly, giving Arya a sideways, knowing glance.

Going out the back way, of course, means Arya would be able to go for a walk without having to pass the stable. Arya assumes Sansa's sly suggestion means she's forgiven her for yesterday's outbursts. Perhaps the unpleasantness with the Karstarks this morning, and the fact that Arya saved Sansa from having to deal with the overeager men herself, has smoothed over their fight from yesterday. Turned it into an unpleasant memory and nothing more.

But Arya doesn't like going out the back way. It's less scenic, and farther from the godswood, which she's decided will be her ultimate destination. "No, Sansa," Arya says. "I won't be made to feel like I can't go where I like in my own home." And she won't. She spent far too long dreaming of returning to Winterfell – both in Westeros, and while she was across the narrow sea. Dreams of home haunted her for years, even when she didn't know her own name.

Arya shakes her head. "If I see him I'll just…" she begins, then trails off, having no idea what it is she _will_ do if she crosses Gendry's path.

"Just keep walking," Sansa suggests firmly. "Keep your head down." She gives Arya a sad smile. "I have experience in avoiding men I'd rather not see, unfortunately. And… well, that approach tends to work. Most of the time."

Arya is about to ask Sansa what she means by all that, but Sansa cuts her off before she has a chance.

"Have a good walk," Sansa tells her, kindly. "And make certain to dress warmly. The northern weather watchers sent a raven this morning. Apparently a terrible blizzard is heading straight for us."

And without another word, Sansa turns on her heels and leaves the room.

* * *

It doesn't take Arya long to reach the stables. Long before she gets there, however, she can hear loud, raucous catcalling and hollering from the men inside.

"Fuckin' idiot, we're all gonna get killed up there, or worse… you shouldn't be in such a rush to go…"

"Just because that Stark bitch slapped you like a little cunt… I mean, she's under Queen's orders to keep and feed ye a full two weeks…"

Arya's cringes as the men continue to talk and tease. They all obviously know she hit Gendry. And now they're gossiping about it, and about her, like a gaggle of old women.

When Arya is about five feet from the stable she sees a large, bundled figure step out of it, carrying a pack. The figure looks up, and suddenly Arya is looking into a pair of brilliant blue eyes she'd recognize anywhere. Her stomach does an odd flip, and she's tempted to run in the opposite direction.

But she stands her ground.

Her eyes snap to the pack Gendry is carrying and then back to Gendry himself. He's dressed in riding clothes underneath his hood and heavy parka.

_He means to leave_, she realizes. _He means to leave without having to see me again._

Gendry looks away from her, a blush beginning to stain the small patches of his cheeks left uncovered by his thick woolen scarf. He turns away from her and kneels on the ground, and starts rummaging through his pack. Presumably to make certain he hasn't left anything behind.

It takes Arya a long moment to find her voice.

"What… where are you going?" she finally stammers. Her words come out squeakier than she'd intended, as if she were still the young girl who left for Kings Landing with her father and sister, and she winces a little at the sound.

Gendry turns to look at her again, his bottom lip between his teeth. He looks rather like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, Arya thinks to herself. Like he's embarrassed to have been discovered doing something he shouldn't. She walks towards him and he averts his eyes as she approaches.

"I… um," he begins. He stands up and swings his pack onto one shoulder.

Shifting nervously from foot to foot, and staring pointedly over Arya's right shoulder even though she knows there's nothing there, he says, very quietly, "I thought I'd get a head start for the Wall is all."

"What? Why?" Arya asks, dumbounded, and not a little panicked. The man in the tent had the right of it just now: most of the men going north will never return. Everyone they've sheltered here has understood this, even though Jon and the Queen never mention that detail in their ravens, and even though Arya and Rickon never breathe a word of their suspicions to anyone.

As such, none of the men they've sheltered have been in any rush to leave. Until now.

"Well," Gendry begins slowly. He toes at the ground with the steel tip of his right boot. It looks like a nervous gesture to Arya. He stares at the print his boot leaves in the snow.

When he continues, still staring at the ground, his words leave him in a rush. "I left Harrenhal because I was tired of being somewhere I wasn't wanted or needed. I'm not especially tired, sick or weak, and… well, I don't really _need_ two weeks of your hospitality, m'lady, especially if it's a burden on you or… or horrible for you in any way."

A lump forms in Arya's throat at his words. She doesn't know what to say.

"I'm needed up north of the Wall," he continues. He laughs a little, but it's a bitter sound. "Or I'm wanted up there, anyway. Can't say that any of us are really _needed_."

"Gendry," Arya says, not unkindly. She tries to keep the waver out of her voice but mostly fails. "You're entitled to two weeks of provisions and rest. Here. At Winterfell. There's nothing north of Winterfell until you get to the Wall – and gods only know what you'll get once you're north of _it_."

"I know all that," Gendry says, sounding frustrated. "But –"

She doesn't let him continue. She will _not_ be the cause of him refusing this last respite before his journey north. The last bit of warm food and shelter he may ever have.

Before she can talk herself out of doing it she walks over to him and puts her gloved hand on his arm. Gives it a gentle squeeze.

Every muscle in his body goes rigid at her touch.

"Stay," she tells him firmly. "I'm… sorry. For yesterday."

And when she says the words she realizes, suddenly, that they're true.

When she last saw him, they were both but summer children. While she may never forgive him for staying on with the Brotherhood, it happened so long ago it may as well have been in another lifetime. She is no longer the Arya Stark she was then, and she never will be again.

This Gendry is not a boy any longer, but a man grown. Who's to say whether he's even the same person who made those choices that hurt her so many years ago? He may be as damaged – as changed – as she is.

"I thank you, m'lady." Arya bristles at the title, but she knows now isn't the time to fight him on it. But it rattles her all the same, and she nervously pulls her hand back and pushes a stray lock of hair behind her ear.

He looks her right in the eye before continuing, his jaw set and determined. "But… please, you must know: I didn't come here to upset you…"

"Why _did_ you come here?" she asks bluntly. "Curious about life beyond the Wall?"

He shakes his head in the negative. He shrugs his shoulders.

"Nothing for me down south anymore," he says simply. "Nothing for anyone, now that the dragons have destroyed everything. Figured… well, I guess I figured, why not head north like the others."

The look on Gendry's face is so sad and resigned that it's instantly clear to Arya that he does, in fact, understand that he's likely signing up for a death sentence at best. It twists at her heart in a foreign, uncomfortable way.

"Stay," she blurts out. "You're entitled to two weeks here. And it's no burden on me, nor my family. Accept this token payment from the Queen."

He takes a small step towards Arya and fixes her with his piercing blue eyes. She finds she can't look away from them. She wonders if they've always been quite so blue.

She swallows thickly.

"Please stay," she says again, very quietly.

Gendry, still looking into her eyes, gives her a small smile.

He drops his pack and she sighs with relief without intending to. But he clearly heard it, because his smile grows.

"All right," he says, still smiling. He nods. "I'll stay. But…"

Arya starts to panic. "But… but what?"

Gendry's face breaks into a broad grin.

"Could you slap a few of the _other_ men tonight? They keep making japes about how I let a pint-sized lady beat on me." He laughs a little and Arya flushes scarlet.

"If you smack The Commander – just once or twice, mind – it might earn me a few moments peace in the stable."

Arya squints her eyes at Gendry and punches him on the arm, hard.

"Idiot," she mutters under her breath.

But it only makes him laugh harder.

* * *

_*** a/n: First person to correctly guess where that line came from wins a cookie. :)_

_Thanks so much for reading along. If you'd like to find me on tumblr, where I blog about GoT/ASoIaF, cats, and assorted other randomness, I'm there as jeeno2._


	5. The God of Death

_a/n: And with this chapter, the story begins to earn its M rating. ;) Thanks so much for reading._

* * *

Gendry is very abruptly woken in the middle of the night by the groaning of rotten wood being ripped apart and the sound of howling wind in his ears.

"Wh-what?" he mutters stupidly, mind and mouth still thick with sleep.

"Come with me!" someone cries out. Gendry glances up and sees it's the Stark boy, looking terrified. He's clearly screaming, but Gendry can only just make out his words over the noise of wind and creaking wood. "You all have to come inside with me, right now!" he pleads.

Gendry looks up. There's above him but swirling snow, black-gray sky, and the heavy branches of ancient pine trees being blown about as if they were nothing but twigs.

He realizes, with a shock, that the wind must have torn most of the stable's roof off the building while they slept.

The banked coals in the corner must have spent themselves overnight, and the stable is darker and much, much colder than it's been at any point during Gendry's stay here. He fumbles around blindly for his pack, cursing under his breath when it takes him longer than a few moments to find it. Swinging it onto his shoulders he stumbles to his feet, noticing, in horror, that in the few minutes it took Rickon Stark to rouse and gather them all together, several inches of newly fallen snow have accumulated on the stable floor.

As Gendry slowly follows the Stark boy and the other men towards the ruined castle, hunched forward, bodies braced against the howling winds, he thanks the Lord of Light that he listened to Arya yesterday and stayed here tonight instead of pressing on towards the Wall.

Gendry no longer believes in the Lord of Light, of course. He knows all those tricks attributed to the Lord of Light are nothing but smoke, mirrors, and dark magic. But thanking the Lord of Light is a habit so ingrained in Gendry after spending so much time with Dondarrion's crew that he isn't certain it'll ever go away.

* * *

The short walk to Winterfell from the stable seems to take an eternity.

When they finally arrive, the fire in Winterfell's Great Hall is roaring even though it's the middle of the night. Gendry knows how precious lumber is and how difficult it is to come by now that the dragons have destroyed everything. Even in a place like Winterfell, where Gendry once heard that trees used to outnumber people three to one.

Gendry can't imagine that the Starks normally keep a fire like this going in a room where nobody sleeps. He decides they must have started it just for them. The realization is an uncomfortable one, and the same unsettled feeling he gets every time he receives a gift he doesn't think he deserves washes over him.

After the men have dropped their packs and shaken the snow off their clothes, boots, and heads, a pretty young woman with red hair approaches them, dressed in a modest night robe tied tightly around her body.

"M'lady," the Commander says, bowing his head politely towards the woman Gendry decides right away must be Sansa Stark. But the Commander doesn't bend the knee. The Commander normally has better manners than this around highborn ladies, but the hour is late, and if Sansa is anything like her sister Gendry knows she wouldn't expect that sort of behavior from them anyway.

"M'lady," Gendry repeats, bowing his head, following the Commander's lead

"Kind sers," the woman says, nodding, addressing the lot of them. "My brother and sister and I are securing bedding and pillows for you all. I'm sorry we cannot offer you more, but I hope you will find this room suitable," she says, sounding almost apologetic, as she gestures to the room they're all standing in. Gendry tries very hard not to scoff, because this front hall, even in Winterfell's present state, might be the most opulent room Gendry has ever slept in.

"I am just so sorry for what's happened to you tonight," Sansa continues, wringing her hands.

Whiskey chuckles wryly. "M'lady, ye cannot control the weather, now can ye?"

"He's right, m'lady," Gendry agrees quickly. "It's the third year of winter. Not all outbuildings are going to make it through." He shrugs. "It's just a fact."

"All the same," Sansa says. "You must have all been so terribly frightened to have woken up quite literally in the middle of a blizzard."

The men mumble a bit in response to this but no one corrects her.

Rickon Stark and Arya enter the room a moment later, their arms piled high with blankets that look to be made from real down, and pillows that look softer than anything Gendry has laid his head on in many years.

They quickly distribute the pillows and blankets to everybody. Gendry takes one of each from Rickon, but his eyes stay trained on Arya. He watches the way she moves gracefully around the room, her hair tied back from her face and her dressing gown – somewhat less modest than Sansa's, a little more flowing and a little more low-cut at the bosom, but still proper enough for a lady of her station to be wearing – billowing behind her as she walks.

It isn't until Sansa bids the men good night that Arya looks up and makes eye contact with him. She stays behind after her siblings leave the room, and walks over to Gendry as the other men settle themselves on the floor with their pillows and blankets.

She puts her bare hand on his arm and gives him a gentle squeeze. Just like she'd done earlier this evening when she'd convinced him not to leave Winterfell. His whole body goes rigid as the skin of her hand burns hotly through the thick fabric of his sleeve.

"I'm… I'm very glad, Gendry, that you decided not to leave," she murmurs quietly, her hand still on his arm. He looks into her impenetrable gray eyes. She pauses a moment before continuing. "You wouldn't have survived this storm."

As if to prove Arya's point, at that precise moment a gust of wind howls outside and rattles the thin panes of glass covering Winterfell's windows.

Gendry wants to thank her for encouraging him to stay. Because she's right: if he'd snuck off this evening like he'd originally planned he'd probably be dead right now rather than standing here with her hand on his arm. Dead of frostbite or hypothermia, most likely. Or even worse, perhaps buried alive under a deep pile of freshly-fallen snow, trapped with his horse.

But Gendry can't manage to thank her, because all he can focus on is the feel of her small, warm hand on his arm. And before he can unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth, she's moving away from him and is gone.

Gendry stands rooted to the spot for a long moment after that, staring at the place where Arya just was. He arranges his pillow and blankets on the floor beside his companions, trying to get comfortable, still able to feel her touch on his arm.

* * *

While Gendry sleeps fitfully on the floor of Winterfell's Great Hall, tossing and turning on the hard wooden floor, he has his first erotic dream about Arya Stark in several years.

She comes to him, her long nut-brown hair flowing loosely about her shoulders, a determined look in her eyes and an irresistible smile. Her nightdress – the same one she wore earlier tonight when she settled them all into their makeshift beds – is open to her waist, leaving her small breasts bare.

"Arya," Gendry chokes out in his dream, all propriety forgotten, as she straddles his prone form and begins to rub him gently through his sleeping pants.

"Shhh," she whispers against his lips. She swallows his feeble, half-hearted protests with a sweep of her tongue and he moans into her mouth, as helpless to resist her iron will now as he was when he was fifteen years old.

All of their clothes vanish an instant later, as sometimes happens in dreams like these, and she's suddenly riding him with abandon. Her head is tossed back, exposing her beautiful neck, and her breasts bounce above him as she moves. Both of her delicate hands are placed firmly on his chest for balance. Or perhaps she's pressing her hands into him just to make certain he knows she's in control of this. Of him. Like that's even necessary. As if he's ever had any say over how he felt about her, or over what would happen if she ever told him that she wants him in the way a woman wants a man.

His fingers dig into her bare hips and he whines, helplessly, as he tries desperately to hold on. Just as he's about to lose himself inside of her, Arya leans forward and whispers roughly into his ear, "I need you to make me come now, Gendry."

He bolts awake suddenly with a cry, disoriented when he realizes Arya's not with him, and his cock harder than it's ever been in his life.

The Commander, lying not two feet away from him, snickers loudly.

"Pleasant dreams, bastard?" He waggles his eyebrows at Gendry and grins toothlessly at him.

_Fuck_. Gendry winces, knowing he must have thrashed around or made some kind of embarrassing noise in his sleep.

Gendry considers trying to go back to sleep, but he knows he'll never manage it in light of how hard as he is right now and with the last words Arya whispered to him in his dream still ringing in his ears.

He wraps his hand around himself and groans involuntarily. But the Commander hears the noise and starts to laugh.

Sighing, Gendry gets out of bed and, ignoring the Commander's lewd comments, slinks off to find a private spot where he can take care of himself.

As he comes apart mere moments later, one hand braced against a hidden corner and the other squeezing his spasming cock, he wonders if Arya's breasts look as perfect in real life as they did in his dream.

* * *

Gendry wakes again with the sunrise a few hours later.

He rolls over and sees that Sansa and Arya are already preparing breakfast in the small kitchen adjacent to the Great Hall. Both women are dressed for the day in their shifts, warm tunics, and thick-soled leather shoes.

Gendry sits up quietly, rubbing his eyes. He looks about him and notices the four other men are still sleeping. Small wonder, given the tumultuous night they all had, and the fact that these are the warmest and most comfortable accommodations any of them have had in many moons.

Gendry leans back on his elbows and his eyes flit towards the kitchen of their own accord, watching as Arya helps Sansa slice apples and pare potatoes. He's filled, suddenly, with hot shame over his inappropriate dream last night. He watches Arya's small, nimble hands working with the food, and he flushes scarlet when he thinks of the way those hands had pressed into his bare chest in his dream. And of how much he had _liked_ it.

_Stop it_, Gendry chastises himself. _Just, stop._ _Look away from her._

But he doesn't look away.

Arya leaves Sansa a moment later and Gendry watches her cross the room. Her hair is down and loose this morning, just as it was in his dream. It's much longer now than it was when they were children, running and hiding together; it looks healthy, clean, and so soft. Without even meaning to, he starts imagining what it would feel like to run his hands through her beautiful hair, and then he berates himself, all over again, for thinking like that about her.

As Sansa continues to prepare the morning meal, Arya sits down at the small kitchen table where several sheets of parchment lay stacked next to an ink bottle and quill. She picks up the topmost parchment and studies whatever's written on it. Arya starts biting her bottom lip, a nervous habit Gendry remembers Arya used to indulge whenever she was very worried about something.

Gendry doesn't know what Arya's been through in the years since he last saw her. And they've barely spoken since he arrived at Winterfell. But he remembers the last conversation they had as children as clearly as if it happened only yesterday, rather than five years ago; the conversation when he'd told her, proudly, that he was staying on with the Brotherhood and becoming a Knight.

He'd felt so desperately, then, that he had to do something drastic to prove himself, to be worth something. He now realizes, with the clarity that comes with becoming a man grown, that what he had really wanted was to be worthy of _her_.

It hadn't occurred to him at the time that by deciding to stay with the Brotherhood, he would actually lose her. But he figured that out quickly enough. When he woke the next morning after that last heated fight, she was gone.

As he continues to watch Arya surreptitiously, she begins to frown, and the look of concern on her face deepens. Frustration bubbles up inside him. Arya was - _is_ – the strongest woman he's ever known, but it's unfair for her to have to shoulder her current burdens alone. He knows his views might be antiquated, in an era when a fierce warrior Queen sits the Iron Throne. And yet, he can't help but feel that even the strongest woman should have a husband to handle, and respond to, difficult matters and stressful sheets of parchment.

Or that at the very least, _Arya_ should have a man who could help her manage such things.

As he watches her make careful marks on her parchment with ink and quill, Gendry wishes with a determination and a clarity he lacked in his youth that he could be that man. But he's nothing but a nameless bastard. His "knighthood," such as it is, isn't worth a pile of warm shit. And she, no matter what she might say by way of protest, is a daughter of one of the greatest Houses Westeros has ever known.

She deserves better than the likes of him. She always has.

Sansa enters the room just then, interrupting Gendry's dark musings.

"Sers," she murmurs quietly to the room of sleeping men. "Breakfast is ready for any of you who might care for some."

Gendry looks up at her and smiles.

"I thank you, m'lady," he says politely, bowing his head. Even though his current train of thought has quelled any appetite he might have had upon waking. He pushes aside his down quilt and stands up slowly. "It smells delicious."

* * *

It isn't until the blizzard's third day, when the Karstarks' promised delivery still has not arrived, that Arya, Rickon, and Sansa begin to worry.

Sansa knows the unpleasant direction Arya's last conversation with the Karstarks took. But they never told Rickon about it, mostly because they didn't want the Karstarks' insinuation that Rickon wasn't man enough to protect his sisters to bruise his tender and emerging male ego.

"This weather must be what's keeping the Karstarks' wagons away," he says to them over breakfast, clearly trying to sound confident and reassuring.

Arya isn't convinced. To be sure, this blizzard is one of the most severe storms they've seen this winter. But blizzards do happen regularly, and they've never once prevented the Karstarks from being on time with a delivery. Ned Starks's former bannermen love gold far too much to allow something as mundane as a blizzard to get in the way of their securing more of it.

_No_, Arya decides grimly. _This has nothing to do with the weather._ With every passing hour she becomes more convinced that it was her prideful, rash reaction to the Karstarks' proposal that's responsible for the delay. Arya wonders, and not for the first time, exactly what "pressing business" called Aleks and Maxim to Deepwood Motte the other day. She's beginning to suspect it may have had to do with the pair of unmarried ladies reported to live there.

As the Starks discuss what they might do if the delivery doesn't arrive today, the men bound for the Wall – still sheltering inside Winterfell's ruined Great Hall, given that weather conditions remain too severe for them to repair the stable's roof – file into the kitchen one by one and ladle their meager breakfasts into bowls. They all leave again once they have their porridge, except for Gendry, who stays behind.

"Begging your pardon, m'lady," he says to Arya and Sansa, nodding first to one and then to the other, "and m'lord," he says to Rickon. "I can't help but have overheard some of what you're discussing."

Arya looks up at Gendry, standing on the opposite side of the room from her. He's leaning against the far wall, between Sansa and the heated coals keeping the tureen of breakfast porridge warm. But he's looking right at Arya, his strong, muscular arms crossed in front of him, his blue eyes fathomless and stormy, and she feels her face grow warm.

Because of the blizzard, it's been impossible for her to avoid Gendry like she'd initially planned when she learned he was at Winterfell. The castle is large, but the habitable portions of it are limited, and it feels like she runs into him at least ten times a day now. When she's looking out the window, for example, looking for a raven or for the Karstarks' wagon. When she's dicing root vegetables. When she's simply moving from one room to another.

Arya values her privacy, and under normal circumstances Gendry's near-constant presence would make her irritable and cross. But the way he looks at her sometimes, when he thinks she doesn't notice, makes her feel… something. Not irritation. Something foreign and confusing.

The fact that she can't put a name to what he makes her feel _does_ bother her, though. Arya wishes this stupid blizzard would just end already so Gendry can go back to sleeping in the stable and everything can go back to the way things were before he came.

This morning Gendry is dressed, as he has been every day since the roof was torn from Winterfell's stable, in an ill-fitting, long-sleeved wool shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. If Arya still harbored any doubt that the boy she once knew is now a man fully grown, the muscles visibly outlined beneath his shirt and his very broad shoulders would put any such doubts to rest.

He's still looking right at her, as if waiting for her to address him before continuing.

Arya clears her throat. "Yes, Gendry?" With difficulty, she tears her eyes away from him. She forces herself to stare at her hands.

"I could go hunting."

"I… beg your pardon?" Sansa asks.

"I could go hunting," Gendry repeats. "I know that you're waiting on a shipment that's not yet come in. There's eight of us here, and I know the food's running out." He shrugs his broad shoulders and crosses his legs at the ankle as he continues to lean against the wall. "I'm no hunter, but I do all right with a bow and arrow. And it's not like there's anything else to do right now…"

"_No_," Arya says, emphatically, slamming her fist down on the kitchen table, her eyes turning towards Gendry once more. She can feel Sansa and Rickon staring at her but she pays them no mind. "Hunting, in this blizzard? No. We've had a foot of new snow just since last night. We're fine. We'll be fine. You are _not_ going out in this."

"M'lady, look –"

"And do _not_ call me that!" Arya shouts at him. "Stop calling me that! My name is Arya. _Arya._ You know that._" _She stands up and glares at him. "Why can't you ever get that through your thick skull?"

Gendry runs his hands through his hair in frustration. "Fine, then. _Arya_. Look. I can just go out to the godswood with a bow and arrow and see if there's anything to see. It'll be fine. I will be fine. And _our_ _food is running out_."

Arya stares him down. If what she suspects is true – if the Karstarks' delay is due to her own impulsive actions, not the weather – she'll never forgive herself if stupid Gendry Waters goes out and gets himself buried in a snowdrift or dies of frostbite trying to catch them something to eat.

"You don't know what you're talking about, Gendry. We have more than enough food at Winterfell to last us a week or more," Arya lies. "And we expect the next shipment to arrive any minute now. Within the hour, most like."

Gendry stares back at her. His eyes narrow, and he folds his arms more tightly across his chest. The motion causes the ropes of muscles in his large forearms to clench and flex, which Arya finds more than a little distracting. But she doesn't back down.

"You are _not_ going out there," she says sharply. When he doesn't reply, she sighs involuntarily. She closes her eyes and shakes her head. "Please, don't go out in this," she adds, in a very different voice.

His eyes widen almost imperceptibly at her plea and then flit away from her.

No one else says anything else for a long moment after that. Rickon fidgets with the food on his plate; Sansa shifts uncomfortably in her chair. Eventually, Gendry clears his throat and runs his hands through his hair again.

"Fine," he says, a little petulantly, not looking at Arya. "If you're so convinced supplies are coming soon –"

"I am," she cuts in.

"If you're so convinced," Gendry repeats, "then I guess I'll just sit around and stare at the walls of the Great Hall some more." He pauses and then adds, pointedly, "_M'lady_."

He glares at Arya one last time before storming out of the kitchen.

"Idiot," Arya mutters under her breath once he's gone. She sits down at the table again but finds she's no longer hungry. She shoves her half-eaten bowl of porridge away from her.

When Sansa asks her why she isn't eating, Arya lies to her and says it's gone cold.

* * *

Early the next morning, while everyone in Winterfell still sleeps, Arya pulls on her warmest outer clothes and gloves. Walking across the Great Hall as though she were practicing her water dancing with Syrio Forel, rather than attempting to sneak out of a castle full of sleeping people who would chastise her endlessly if they caught her, she takes her bow and set of arrows from the cupboard where she stores them.

Like a wisp of smoke – like she is still _no one_ – she slips out Winterfell's front door unseen. Just like that. Once outside she straps on the snow shoes that will allow her to flit over snow tens of feet deep and sets off for the godswood.

Gendry had the right of it yesterday, of course. They are running out of food. If the Karstarks' delivery does not arrive today – and Arya has no reason to believe that it will, after ruminating over the situation during yet another sleepless night – all of their food will be gone by mid-afternoon tomorrow. They'll have nothing to eat but whatever rats they can catch in Winterfell's catacombs.

Or whatever she might be able to catch in the godswood this morning.

Although Gendry wasn't wrong in his assessment of their situation, fixing this is her responsibility. Not his. It was her hubris in her dealings with the Karstarks that got them into this, and she'll be the one to get them out of it. Caring for her siblings and the men bound for the Wall is her burden; not his.

It takes Arya much longer than it usually does to reach the godswood. The snow has been falling fast and continuously over the past four days, and even her well-made snow shoes are no match for these conditions. She looks around her as she trudges through the snow, and tries to estimate how much has fallen since she was last outside. She can't quite manage it. In places, however, the drifts easily reach ten feet above her head, and some of the smaller trees on the outskirts of the godswood are nearly completely submerged in snow.

The world is eerily quiet today, as though the heavy snow weren't just blanketing the ground but also plugging up her ears with large fluffy balls of cotton. Even the sounds of the noisy winter birds that typically plague them in the early morning hours are muted; barely there.

For most of her time in Braavos, Arya had nothing to rely upon but her hearing. It's unnerving, now, for this particular sense to be dulled.

Arya is just contemplating how different – how much _better_ – life here is in Winterfell, the current situation with the Karstarks notwithstanding, than it ever was in Braavos, when she suddenly hears a very loud crashing noise right behind her.

It smashes the silence that blankets everything into millions of tiny brittle pieces and makes her jump back in surprise.

Arya turns around, without thinking, towards the source of the noise.

A moment later she is caught, helplessly, like a fly in hardening amber, inside an enormous drifting wall of heavy snow.

She tries to scream but the snow won't allow it. It suffocates her. Fills her throat. Her nose. Her eyes.

Arya thinks to herself, _not today! _Frantically. But she cannot say the words aloud, and she knows the God of Death won't be able to hear her from within this tomb.


	6. Daggers

_Arya runs through the forest with her pack, trying to keep up._

_But every part of her hurts. Her muzzle. Her back, her belly. Her chest, each time she tries to fill her lungs with air. Her paws, with every step she takes on the snow-covered ground._

_Despite the pain, she can't stop running or let herself slow down. Her pack would never leave her behind – not ever – but that's exactly why she must keep going. She cannot let them wait behind for her. It could endanger them, or cause them to lose a kill they desperately need to survive the winter._

_And so she runs. But the pain, the pain, the _pain_ permeates every thought, every fiber of her being, until she is more pain than wolf. She begins to whine, loudly, channeling the pure agony she has become into this outpouring of sound._

_Arya's packmates join her. They howl and whine as they run, because they are her family, but also more than family. In truth, they are but separate parts of the same living entity. They whine in sympathy, but in pain too._

_When Arya hurts, they suffer as one._

* * *

The first thing Arya notices upon waking is the bright sunlight streaming in through her bedchamber window.

She rolls over in bed. There's a dull, but persistent, ache throughout her entire body.

She yawns and stretches her body, but that _really _hurts, and this pain is much sharper. She stops moving and whimpers quietly, gingerly folding her limbs back into herself.

"You're awake," says a hoarse voice, sounding incredulous. Rickon. Arya opens her eyes and turns her head a little to look at her brother.

Arya's head is thick with the fogginess that comes with a very long sleep. She wonders how long she was gone. She registers the dark circles under her brother's eyes and suspects he hasn't slept in days.

She tries to speak, to ask Rickon what's happened and if he knows why she hurts so much. But when she tries to form words her throat feels as if she was recently force-fed a thousand shards of broken glass.

She winces in pain and clutches at her throat with both hands. Perhaps a glass of water would help. She looks up at Rickon plaintively and soundlessly mouths the word _water_.

Rickon looks relieved at the request, and he stumbles in his haste to get to his feet.

"I'll be right back," he promises. "With water."

And then he's gone, leaving Arya alone with her broken body and muddled head.

_Rickon's gotten so tall_, Arya muses dreamily, as she drifts back to sleep.

* * *

The next time Arya wakes her bedchamber is much darker.

She turns her head towards her bedside table. A large pitcher of water rests on top of it, alongside a steaming mug of something hot.

She tries to sit up a little so she can reach the mug. But a sharp stab of pain that begins in her shoulders and races down her spine smacks her back down onto the bed. She whimpers in agony and frustration.

"Please," she hears Gendry say. It sounds like pleading. She looks towards his voice. He's sitting in the small chair in the corner of her bedchamber; his countenance looks like pleading, too. "Let me."

Sansa would likely expect Arya to be taken aback by the fact that there's a man in her bedchamber. But she isn't. When Gendry rushes over to her and kneels at her bedside, steaming mug of tea in his hands, all Arya feels is gratitude.

_Thank you_, she mouths soundlessly, remembering how painful her last attempt to talk had been. She manages a weak smile, and a look of relief floods Gendry's features.

_What happened?_ she mouths at him. Gendry doesn't respond. His eyebrows knit together the same way she remembers they've always done whenever he doesn't understand something.

She motions with her hands for him to move closer to her, and then points to her mouth. She wants to whisper the question in his ear, hoping she can manage to at least whisper without pain.

Gendry hesitates for a moment, but the confusion on his face vanishes. He clearly understands her request. And, ultimately, he obliges. He bends his head a little, turning his right ear towards her mouth.

"What happened?" she whispers, so quietly that if Gendry's ear were more than the hairsbreadth away from her mouth that it is he probably wouldn't be able to hear her. Whispering hurts her throat; but it's bearable.

He sits back on his haunches and looks at her. "You don't remember any of it?"

She shakes her head. _No_, she mouths at him. Because she doesn't. The last thing she remembers before waking up in this bed was sneaking out of Winterfell to go hunting in the godswood.

Gendry runs his hands through his dark hair and lets out a long breath.

"You got caught up in an avalanche," he says, quietly. "It was loud as seven hells and woke us all up. If it had happened any further away from Winterfell, dunno that we'd have… known it had happened." His voice is unsteady, and for an insane moment Arya wonders if he's about to cry.

_An avalanche?_ she mouths at him, shocked. He seems to understand her and he nods.

"Yes," he says. "We don't know what caused it. Don't suppose it matters. But you were caught in it, your whole body – not a bit of you was sticking out." He takes a deep breath, as though trying to calm himself, before continuing. "But your stupid bow must have been knocked out of your hands when it happened. Rickon saw it lying on the ground and recognized it right away."

Gendry stands up and begins pacing her bedchamber, hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. "Otherwise we likely never would have known you were in it."

As Gendry speaks, flashes of memories come back to her. Snow drifts taller than any tree she'd ever seen. Silence that blanketed everything… until it was shattered by a deafening noise.

That noise must have been the precursor to the avalanche that caught her up. This must be why it feels like every bone in her body is broken.

She wants to ask him how long she'd been unconscious. But Gendry's pacing has brought him to the far side of the room and she cannot vocalize loudly enough to be heard from there.

At length, he turns around and begins walking towards her again. She takes a sip of the tea in her hands. The hot liquid feels soothing and coats her throat going down.

"There's milk of the poppy in that," Gendry warns, pointing at the mug. "We've been giving it to you every time you'd so much as roll over in bed the past three days."

"I've been asleep for _that long_?" she rasps aloud, shocked. The heat of the tea – or perhaps the milk of the poppy it contains – has soothed her throat enough for her to talk a little above a whisper.

Gendry kneels at her bedside again. He looks up at her, and for the first time Arya notices his eyes are rimmed with red.

"Yes," he murmurs quietly. His voice is trembling. "You've been gone for three days."

Neither one of them say anything for a very long time after that. Arya clutches the hot mug, letting it warm her up from the inside, grateful for something to do with her hands.

"How did you get me out?" she whispers.

Gendry laughs a little but it's a bitter sound, lacking any humor. "We all dug you out together." He presses his lips together in a grim line before continuing. "And then I carried you into your bedchamber."

Gendry clears his throat before continuing.

"You're an idiot, you know," he tells her. But his voice is soft, even as his words chastise. "Been waiting three whole days to tell you that. And you're a filthy hypocrite, too, for ordering me not to go out there and then doing it yourself." He shakes his head in disbelief. "I'd knock some sense into you if you weren't so beaten up already."

Hot shame floods her at his words, because he's right. It doesn't matter that her motivations were good; she did a stupid thing. She looks away from him and watches the steam rise from her mug of tea.

She'd apologize if she thought it would do any good. She hopes her contrition shows on her face all the same.

"I should go," he murmurs quietly. But he makes no move to stand. When she looks up at him again his bright blue eyes, illuminated in the darkness from the candle at her bedside, are still trained on her.

"Why?" she whispers. She finds, suddenly, that she doesn't want to be left alone with her thoughts and her physical pain.

One side of his mouth quirks up in a half smile, and she knows he's about to answer her. Before he has a chance to open his mouth, however, and without even thinking about it, Arya leans forward and presses a chaste kiss to that side of his mouth. For carrying her to her bedchamber even though she'd been an idiot, she supposes. For not lecturing her any more than he did.

His lips are chapped and they part a little – in surprise, possibly. But he doesn't move away from her, and she kisses him on the other corner of his mouth. Because somehow, it feels like the right thing to do.

Before she can pull back from him this time he turns his head infinitesimally and kisses her properly, full on the mouth.

This isn't Arya's first kiss. She did some reprehensible things with the Faceless Men in Braavos, and she is no blushing maid. The gentle, practiced way Gendry brushes his lips against hers tells Arya that this isn't his first kiss, either.

None of that matters. This is the first kiss Arya's ever experienced that made her feel dizzy and weak in the knees, and left her tingling, breathless, and wanting more. After an endless moment Gendry leans forward a little to cup her face in his work-roughened hands. The touch of his hands is electric, and it feels like she's falling.

Arya sighs and opens her mouth a little to encourage him. But it has the opposite effect, seeming to snap him out of the reverie their kiss put them both in. To her great disappointment he pulls away from her.

"We can't do this," he mumbles, his mouth less than an inch away from hers, his cheeks flushed and his hands still cupping her face. He says it as much to himself, it seems, as to her. "We can't," he says again, more emphatically.

He tries to pull his hands away from her but she covers them with her own before he can manage it. Gives them a squeeze. "Why in the seven hells not?" she whispers.

He sighs and he closes his eyes as a pained look crosses his features. "Because, Arya," he says. "Because I'm me, and you're you." As if that's supposed to mean something to her. He slips his hands out of hers and stands up. He gives her a sad smile and crosses over to the door of her bedchamber.

"Also, your brothers and sister are right downstairs, and I'd rather they not catch me here, alone with you, in your bedchamber." He blushes a little at the implication.

She's confused by the plural form of _brother_ he just used. She can't speak loudly enough to be heard from across the room, but her confusion must be written plainly on her face because he clarifies what he means a moment later.

"Jon Snow is here," he explains. "He got here yesterday afternoon."

_Jon is… here?_

Ignoring the pain that's screaming through her body, Arya tries to get out of bed. Before she's even managed to get her legs out from under her bedcovers, however, Gendry's at her side again, lying her back down and tucking her blankets around her.

"Jon," she whispers plaintively, trying in vain to struggle out of her bed, her eyes beginning to well with tears. "Jon. I haven't seen him in so long, Gendry… I never thought I'd see him again. I need to get up –"

She tries to get out of bed again but it's no use. Gendry simply shakes his head in the negative and pulls her bedcovers more tightly around her small body. "He's going to come up and see you himself. He was just waiting until you were awake."

He hesitates a moment before leaning over her and placing another gentle, chaste kiss to her cheek. He pulls back almost immediately, but the spot where his lips touched her face feels like fire.

"Sansa will be furious if you leave this room before you're fully recovered." Gendry continues. "To say nothing of how _I_ feel about it."

"You stupid idiot," she spits at Gendry hoarsely. Every instinct in her body is screaming at her to go downstairs, right now, find Jon, and fling herself into his arms. But the milk of the poppy must be taking effect, because suddenly the room begins to spin and it's all Arya can do to keep her eyes open.

"Idiot," she repeats. But her eyes are closing and she knows she's lost this fight.

Gendry turns to leave. When he gets to the door, he looks back towards her and hesitates briefly.

"Goodnight, Arya," he murmurs quietly, closing her bedchamber door behind him.

* * *

When Gendry rejoins everyone else he's terrified they will just _know_, simply by looking at him, that he was in Arya's bedchamber, kissing her, not a moment ago.

But to his great relief, everyone's attention is focused entirely on Lord Commander Snow. Rickon glances up at Gendry briefly when he sits down behind the others. Nobody else spares him so much as a glance.

Gendry lets out a deep breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and does his best to listen to what the Lord Commander is telling them.

Lord Snow arrived at Winterfell yesterday during a lucky gap in the blizzard under express orders from the Queen. He hadn't sent a raven ahead of time, and his appearance at Winterfell took everybody by surprise.

"The wights, and some of the White Walkers, are getting south of the Wall somehow," he'd told them when he arrived. His eyes were ringed with dark circles that belied his claim that he was in no need of rest. "It's imperative that all men who ride north from here are armed with one of these before leaving."

He held up a small dagger made from no metal Gendry had ever seen before.

"Obsidian," the Lord Commander had clarified. "It doesn't look like much, but a stab with this to the chest will kill the Others. It's the only thing we know of that can."

He'd ridden south from the Wall with a wagon full of food and full of obsidian daggers. "It wasn't necessary to arm men at Winterfell before. But the war beyond the Wall has taken a marked turn for the worse. I'm here to arm you, and to explain to you as best I can the nature of the creatures you'll be fighting against. As well as the kind of terrain you'll be seeing north of here."

Snow collapsed to the ground not thirty seconds after that – most likely from exhaustion, Gendry guessed. He'd helped Sansa and Rickon Stark carry their brother upstairs to his old bedchamber.

"Arya?" the Snow asked, weakly, once comfortably settled into bed.

"She's here," Sansa confirmed, taking one of his hands in hers and squeezing it. "She's sleeping. My dear, sweet Jon." Sansa began to cry softly, and pressed a kiss to the back of his hand. But he was already fast asleep.

He slept for nearly an entire day and night. It wasn't until this afternoon that he felt equal to the task of fully briefing them on the situation north of Winterfell.

The Lord Commander now stands by the mantel in Winterfell's Great Hall. He's affixed a great big map to it, and is pointing out various points of interest between Winterfell and the Wall with a large poker from the hearth. Everyone in the room is paying him rapt attention, including Sansa, who keeps dabbing at her red eyes with a plain white handkerchief.

Gendry knows that this information could quite literally mean the difference between his life and his death in the coming weeks. But he cannot focus on what Lord Commander Snow is saying. All he can think about right now is the girl he left upstairs and how kissing her – even in the chaste way that he had – was more intense than kissing her has ever been in his wildest dreams.

The feel of her lips against his after all these years was intoxicating. When she'd opened her lips for him it had taken all of his willpower not to thrust his tongue into her mouth like she'd clearly wanted him to do. And it had taken more strength than he thought he possessed not to climb into her bed and hold her close. Not to take care of her in every way possible until her body recovered from her accident.

But Gendry knows that it will never be his right to do any of these things. Even the one small transgression they shared can never happen again.

As Snow continues speaking, Gendry looks down at his hands. The hands that had cupped Arya's small, beautiful face not ten minutes ago.

Gendry clenches his hands into fists and shakes his head, trying to clear it. The movement actually helps a little, and he is now able to half-listen to the lecture.

Looking up, he realizes that Snow is no longer standing in front of the map. He's off to the side of the room, holding one of those small daggers in his hands. Snow passes it around the room, letting all the men familiarize themselves with it.

Once the dagger has made it around the room, Snow discusses obsidian's properties and where they should strike the White Walkers when – or if – opportunity presents.

_But those daggers are so small_, Gendry muses.

"Guess we'll need to be in pretty close range to be able to use them," Gendry says. It isn't a question.

"Unfortunately, yes," the Lord Commander confirms, nodding. "Whoever left these behind for us millennia ago must have been fond of hand-to-hand combat," he says dourly.

Gendry shrugs his shoulders. "Can't imagine we'll have many opportunities to be that close to them. Not without dying first. Right?"

The Lord Commander doesn't respond to this. But he doesn't have to.

"Don't you think it would be a more effective weapon if you… welded some sort of metal rod to the non-pointy end of that thing?" Gendry asks, pointing to the dagger in the Lord Commander's hand. "Turned it into a kind of spear?"

"Absolutely," Snow replies immediately. "Of course. But the only forge north of the Wall burned to the ground during the War of the Five Kings." He shakes his head ruefully. "And the Queen has been too preoccupied ever since to devote any resources for rebuilding."

Gendry turns to Rickon. "Does Winterfell still have a forge?"

Rickon nods. "Yes, ser. Guess the Dreadfort didn't see any need to sack _it_."

"Good," Gendry says. He turns his attention back to Snow. "I've a great deal of experience in blacksmithing, m'lord. If it pleases m'lord, and if there are any steel rods to be had, I'm happy to take those daggers of yours and turn them into weapons we might actually be able to _use_ against the Others."

The Lord Commander doesn't say anything right away. He turns the dagger in his hand over and over, staring at it as if it contains some great mystery.

"Is it even _possible_ to forge steel with obsidian?" Snow asks Gendry, very slowly.

Gendry shrugs his shoulders. "I've no idea, m'lord," he admits. "But if it pleases m'lord, I'd say it's worth a try."

* * *

The next time Arya wakes she can see the full moon from her bedchamber window, clearly illuminated against the dark night sky.

Arya does not know how long she slept this time. But Jon still hasn't come to see her, as Gendry had promised he would, and she's feeling angry about it.

She's about to get out of bed and go find Jon – to hell with Gendry's stupid warning to stay in bed until she's fully recovered – when she hears a loud, and very male, moan drift through the wall separating Arya's bedchamber from Sansa's.

Followed immediately by Sansa's quiet giggle.

"Jon, _sssshhh_!"

Another quiet laugh – Jon's, this time; Arya would recognize Jon's laugh anywhere – and then the sound of a bed rocking, very rhythmically, against the wall separating the girls' rooms.

_Oh._

Arya flushes scarlet and pulls her pillow over her head. She's able to do it without much pain, she notices. The milk of the poppy must be working well. Or perhaps she's finally starting to heal.

Either way, as desperately as she wants to see Jon again, now is clearly not the time.

She tries as hard as she can not to listen to her sister and her… well, her _not-brother_. . . as they love together in the adjacent room. But the walls in this part of the castle are thin, as is the pillow Arya is using to try and block the sound. And it seems like the more she tries to ignore Jon and Sansa, the louder they get.

Arya believed Sansa implicitly when she told her Jon isn't, in fact, their brother. They are not Lannisters, after all; she knows Sansa wouldn't be in her bedchamber right now with Jon, or pregnant with his child, if it weren't the truth.

Sansa hasn't said anything else to Arya about what, if anything, Jon actually _is_ to them, though. Out of respect for her sister and her delicate condition, Arya hasn't pried further. But as she hears Sansa fall apart, very, very loudly in the next room – all earlier admonitions to Jon to stay quiet apparently forgotten – Arya decides, annoyed, that she has the right to know.

Even if he is not her brother, Arya has always felt more comfortable talking with Jon than with Sansa. About any and every subject. It's been that way ever since she can remember. Rolling over in bed – again, with minimal pain – Arya decides that first thing tomorrow morning she's going to welcome Jon home, give him as big a hug as her injured body will allow, and ask him what in the seven hells is going on.

In some order or another.

After what feels like an interminable length of time, the indelicate noises coming from Sansa's bedchamber stop. There's an exchange of soft whispered words, a quiet chuckle, and then nothing at all. _Thank the Seven_, Arya thinks to herself, rolling her eyes.

But Arya finds that she cannot fall back asleep. _Perhaps because I've been asleep for \days_, she muses sourly.

As she tries, in vain, to fall back to sleep, her mind begins to wander, replaying what happened with Gendry earlier today. Even though she had initiated the kiss it had taken her completely by surprise.

What's even more surprising is that she doesn't regret the kiss. Not in the slightest.

Arya has been through far too much to let stupid things that never mattered to her – like name, and House status, and legitimacy – get in the way of things she wants. She doesn't know what the past five years of Gendry's life have brought him but she suspects he's been through hell, too.

By the gods, that kiss felt _good_, and she wants to kiss him again. She doesn't give a damn about anything else in the moment. And she sees no need to dwell on what another kiss between them might or might not mean.

Gingerly, Arya pulls down her bedcovers. It doesn't hurt at all. She slowly swings her legs over the side of her bed and carefully stands up, relieved that the movements cause only minimal pain.

Arya has no idea what she's going to say to Gendry when she finds him. But it feels like she's been in this bed forever, and she's had enough of it.

As she slowly walks down the stairs to where the men are sleeping she decides she'll figure out what she'll say to Gendry when she gets there.

* * *

**a/n: Thank you so much for reading along. If you'd like to find me on tumblr, where I blog about GoT/ASOIAF, cats, and other assorted foolishness, I'm there as jeeno2 as well.**


	7. Snow

**a/n: I've decided to take the tiniest detour from canon starting with this chapter. I'm not the world's biggest fan of the Lady Stoneheart storyline (to put it mildly), and so I've decided to just pretend Lady Stoneheart never happened. Because why not. Going forward, I guess this story would technically be considered AU (but only just).**

**Thank you so much for reading. :)**

* * *

Given her physical condition and the deep snow that blankets everything, it takes Arya more than fifteen minutes to travel the short distance from Winterfell's front gates to its forge. That's where the man they call The Commander had told her she'll find Gendry.

"And I'm _sure_ he'll be glad to see ye', m'lady," the older man had said with a grin and a wink.

Arya knows Gendry is probably sleeping. But she's been asleep for days now, and she's restless. And she is not much in the mood to hear anything else from Sansa's bedchamber tonight.

Might as well get this over with now.

When she finally gets to the forge she raps as loudly as she can on the front door. She only has to wait a few moments before Gendry opens it, carrying a large stick in one hand and wearing what Arya assumes must be his sleeping clothes. His thick black hair sticks up comically in all directions, confirming her earlier suspicion that he was asleep when she arrived.

He looks so funny that Arya has to bite the inside of her cheek to stifle a giggle.

Gendry's eyes are blurry with sleep. But they snap into focus right away when he sees who's standing at the door.

"Arya?" he asks incredulously. He tosses the stick to the side. "What in the seven hells are you _doing_ here?"

She brushes past him and walks into the front room of Winterfell's forge.

"I want to talk to you," she answers quietly, trying to ignore the nerves coiling tightly in the pit of her belly now that she's here. Her voice is returning but speaking above a low murmur is still uncomfortable.

But it's trembling all the same.

She hasn't been inside Winterfell's forge since she was a very small child and her father introduced her to Sol, the old blacksmith who used to live and work here. The room she and Gendry are in now is spare, with a work table in the center piled high with what looks to be a lot of black glass daggers, and a workbench in front of that. The large furnace where Winterfell's blacksmith has traditionally worked his craft takes up most of the rest of the room.

There's a small wooden chair off to one side, and Arya pulls it out and gingerly sits down. The walk here exhausted her; she will not be able to have this conversation standing.

"All right…" Gendry says, cautiously. He sits down on the workbench. "Let's talk. Here, in the forge. In the middle of the night," he says, stifling a yawn. He sounds more than a little annoyed. Arya supposes she can hardly blame him.

He looks pointedly at her, waiting for her to begin. Now that she's here, though, she finds she doesn't know what to say.

"Erm…" she begins, then trails off. Suddenly she isn't certain she can do this, or even of what, specifically, she'd hoped to accomplish by coming here. She pulls her coat more tightly around her body and shifts anxiously in her seat, wondering if this was a mistake.

After another long moment of silence, Gendry rolls his eyes.

"Look, Arya," he says, sounding even more annoyed than before. "I'm really happy you're feeling well enough to be walking around outside late at night. Even though you _know_ everyone wants you to stay in bed until you're fully recovered." He stands up and makes to head to the back room of the forge, where Sol used to sleep when he was still at Winterfell.

"But I have a lot to do tomorrow," he says, clearly agitated now. He gestures to the daggers on the table. "And I need to sleep. So if you don't mind-"

"I liked kissing you," Arya blurts out, putting as little thought into the words as she had into initiating the kiss itself.

Gendry stops walking towards the back room. He slowly pivots on one foot to face her.

"What?" he asks, his voice toneless.

"I said," she begins, coughing a little into her hand to clear her throat. "I said, I liked kissing you. And I… just wanted you to know that."

Gendry's eyes go wide. "You wanted me to know that in the middle of the night?" he asks weakly.

Arya shrugs. "I've been sleeping for days. I woke up and just couldn't sleep anymore." She doesn't tell him what she overheard from Sansa's bedchamber earlier tonight. Somehow, telling Gendry about it would feel like a betrayal. "I didn't tell you how I felt earlier, and I… I just wanted you to know."

Gendry's eyes are still wide. He doesn't speak for a long moment.

When he finally does say something it isn't what Arya expects.

"Why'd you hit me the other day?" he asks quietly. He walks slowly back towards the workbench. He sits down again and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands together in front of him.

Arya fidgets in her chair, unnerved by the question. "I apologized for that," she mumbles to the floor.

"I know," Gendry says, not unkindly, all trace of annoyance in his voice gone. "And it's all right. I'm sure I deserved getting hit for something," he adds, smiling a little. "But I'd still like to know why you did it."

Arya stares at her hands, twisting them in front of her.

"I am – _was_, rather – I don't know. Angry, with you. For staying with the Brotherhood. When we were children."

"Arya," Gendry says, sounding pained. Arya looks up at him. He's buried his face in his hands, and the sight of it tugs at her heart. "I can't tell you how many times I've wished over the years that I'd chosen differently then."

After a long pause, Arya asks, quietly, "Did you stay with them long, Gendry? After I left?"

Gendry runs his hands through his hair and rubs his eyes.

"I stayed with them a while, I guess." He looks directly at her and smiles sadly. "After about a year I decided Dondarrion and that red priest were little more than a mummer's farce. But I didn't have anywhere else to go. And no reason to be anywhere else, either."

He looks down at his hands.

"Not with you gone," he adds. Gendry's voice is little above a whisper now, but his words are enough to tighten the coil of nerves in Arya's belly.

She decides to ignore her nerves for now. She slowly walks over to him and sits down next to him on his bench. She takes one of his large hands in hers and squeezes it. His eyes flutter closed.

"My life was… so hard, Gendry. For years," Arya says quietly. He doesn't need to know what happened in Braavos. That can wait for another time, or perhaps forever. And he's distraught enough as it is. "When I first saw you here at Winterfell all I could think was that you'd somehow been partially responsible for it all by leaving me."

Gendry pulls his hand from hers and buries his face in both hands again. "Arya… I'm just… so sorry. I don't –"

"But none of it was your fault," she cuts in, as sharply as she can. "It was war, and my family and I were Starks. We were targets, all six of us. And you and I were both children." She coughs quietly into her hand; this much talking is starting to strain her voice. But she wants him to hear this.

"_Children_," she says again, as emphatically as she can. "I didn't even have a name for what it was I felt for you then. You couldn't have known what your leaving would do to me."

Gendry takes his hands away from his face and looks right at her.

"And now?" he asks, so quietly Arya can barely hear him. "Now that you're a woman grown, do you know what it was you felt for me?" The look on his face is intense, pleading.

It's too much for her. Arya looks away and down at the floor.

"I don't know what it was," she says. Even though she realizes, just as the words are leaving her lips, that that's not entirely true anymore. "All I know is that I liked kissing you. A lot. I didn't want you to stop kissing me when you did. And… I want to kiss you again, Gendry."

She glances up at him.

"You do?" Gendry asks, eyes wide and unbelieving.

Arya turns her body towards his on the bench and positions her feet so that the tips of their boots are touching.

"I do," she whispers. And it's the truth. She leans forward a little and lightly places both of her palms flat on his broad chest. She looks up at him with half-lidded eyes.

It's apparently the only invitation Gendry needs to close the narrow gap between their bodies and press his lips to hers.

Whether it's due to the very late hour or to their recent conversation, Gendry is much less tentative than he was last time. When she opens her mouth for him he doesn't hesitate, eagerly touching the tip of his tongue to hers. She wraps her arms around him as tightly as she can as he tastes her, as he traces gentle patterns on the roof of her mouth, her teeth, and her gums.

When she begins caressing his tongue with her own he sighs helplessly into her mouth. He wraps her up tightly in his own arms, and she smiles against his lips.

As they kiss, and as their tongues begin to tangle together needfully in her mouth, in his mouth, and in both, Arya tries to make the space between their bodies as small as possible. But no matter how much she moves towards him on the bench, no matter how much she tries to pull him into her, she can't get close enough. Her entire body is overcome by a heady warmth that has nothing to do with the low fire still burning in the furnace, and she's flooded with a sudden rush of memories of Gendry's steadiness and loyalty.

She feels safer now, in Gendry's arms, kissing him in the middle of the night, than she has in recent memory.

After a long moment Gendry pulls back from her. He's breathing heavily now, and begins trailing an agonizingly slow line of kisses across her jaw, over to her ear, and then down the delicate slope of her neck.

"We can't do this, Arya," he whispers huskily to the sensitive juncture of her neck and shoulder before lathing the spot with his tongue, as if he doesn't believe his words himself. It feels like every nerve in her body is concentrated in the spot where he's lavishing her with attention, and she's awash in sensation, incapable of speech.

She digs her fingertips into Gendry's back as he slowly kisses his way back up her neck. She has to bite her lip to keep from crying out.

"You need to go back home," he whispers into her ear, right before he sucks the lobe into his mouth and begins worrying it with his teeth.

She wants to protest, to call him an idiot. But when she opens her mouth all that comes out is a quiet moan.

The sound she makes both inflames and stops him. He takes his lips away from her body and pulls her into a crushing hug, his breath coming very fast now.

"I want you so badly, Arya," he whimpers into her ear. Her heart leaps into her throat at the admission. "I have for… for forever. But I can't have you…"

His words jar her. Because they make no sense.

"What in the seven hells are you talking about?" she asks him.

Gendry pulls back from their embrace. He looks directly into her eyes, his black pupils fat inside blue irises. He gently cradles her face in his hands.

"You know what I am. What I've always been," he tells her mournfully. "A bastard. And you, Arya… you're _Arya Stark_." He shakes his head and closes his eyes again. "I have nothing to give you. Not even a name…"

Arya slaps him across the face, hard.

"_Ow_!" he cries out, in surprise and what sounds like legitimate pain.

"You idiot," she spits at him. "Do you really think I care about that? Do you really think any of that _matters_ to me? That that sort of thing has _ever_ mattered to me?"

Gendry shakes his head. "Arya, I'm not worthy of you. Your parents would have wanted you married to a highborn Lord, or at the very least to a real knight –"

"My parents are dead, Gendry," Arya reminds him, her voice cold, all of the heat from a few moments ago gone. "It doesn't matter what they would have wanted."

She laughs a little, but it's a bitter laugh, lacking any trace of humor.

"It wouldn't have mattered to me what they wanted even if they were still alive."

But Gendry persists. "Other highborn lords and ladies would have expected you to marry well. They still will, despite what's happened in Westeros and to your family. I won't let you ruin yourself for me."

Arya almost laughs again, right at him this time. She almost tells him she was "ruined" years ago. But she doesn't.

Instead, she stands up from the bench and storms to the door of the forge.

"I don't care what other people expect me to do, you stupid idiot. I never have." She opens the door and takes a step outside.

"And if you don't know that about me, Gendry," she tells the night sky. "Well. Then I guess you've never really known me at all."

Before leaving for Winterfell she glances behind her once more. Gendry's still sitting on the bench, looking stricken and miserable.

"I want you too, Gendry." She shakes her head at him. "And to answer your earlier question – I wanted you when we were children as well. I was just too young at the time to know it."

And without another word, Arya slams the forge door shut behind her.

Furious, she walks as quickly as she can to the castle, the frigid nighttime air already settling into her bones.

* * *

To Arya's surprise, when she enters Winterfell's Great Hall the fire in the hearth is roaring.

Their recent practice has been to put out the fire after supper and keep the coals banked overnight. It's enough to keep the room warm for the men sheltering here (or so they've assured her), and it helps conserve their dwindling firewood supply.

When Arya looks up from the hearth to the adjacent room, she immediately understands why the fire is blazing. Somebody's awake.

At the sight of the man seated at the small table, frowning and hunched over a large sheet of parchment, she nearly falls to the ground in shock and relief.

"Jon," she whimpers.

At the sound of his name, Jon Snow looks up from his reading. When he sees Arya he grins broadly. His eyes light up.

"Arya," he says, sounding happier than she can ever remember Jon sounding.

She wants to run to him, but her traitor legs won't carry her quickly enough. She stumbles towards him instead, and he meets her in the middle of the Great Hall. When they reach each other Jon picks her up and swings her around and around. And she giggles like a little girl as he does it. As if hours, rather than several lifetimes, are all that have passed since they've last seen each other. As though they were still both children living together under Winterfell's big roof.

"My sweet Arya Underfoot," he murmurs into her ear, before laughing, apparently delighted at his cleverness. She punches his arm playfully for calling her by that old, hated nickname.

"Ow!" Jon says in mock pain. He sets her back down on the ground and rubs the spot where she hit him.

Taking pity on the men still sleeping on the floor around them, they walk quietly into the next room, where Jon's parchment is still spread out on the table.

"What are you doing awake at this hour?" she asks him.

He laughs at her. "I might ask you the same thing."

Arya blushes. Because he raises a fair point.

"It's… it's so good to see you," she says. Partially to change the subject, but also because it's true. "You have no idea how much I've missed you, Jon."

He smiles sadly at her. He runs his right hand through his hair and rubs his eyes. Arya notices, for the first time, that his dark hair is completely shot through with grey.

Her stomach sinks. Jon is not an old man yet. He's only seen twenty-one name days. What have his responsibilities as Lord Commander of the Night's Watch _done_ to him?

"Actually, Arya, I think I do have some idea," he corrects her, very quietly. "Because I've missed you more than I thought it possible to miss someone."

Despite the fact that they have years to catch up on, Arya Stark and Jon Snow are nothing if not pragmatic. There are important issues to discuss, and so they quickly move on from small talk to matters of greater import.

"I take it everyone here is eating?" Arya asks him. "When I… well. When I had my accident, we were still waiting on a supply delivery."

"Yes. I heard all about your accident_,_" Jon says, shaking his head at her. It's not clear whether he disapproves of her actions that led up to the accident, or simply the fact that she's traipsing about in the middle of the night so shortly after it happened. Either way, it's clear from the firm set of his jaw that he disapproves of something she's done.

The realization makes her feel like a girl of nine again. She is overcome by a dizzying sense of déjà vu.

Thankfully, he doesn't press the issue. "And yes, everyone is eating. Before I left the Wall, Queen Daenerys Targaryen outfitted me with plenty of provisions for everybody here, in addition to the obsidian daggers."

Arya wonders if those daggers were what she saw on the work table in the forge. In her nervous and excited state she never thought to ask Gendry what they were. Or even what, in fact, he was doing in Winterfell's forge in the first place.

But these are petty details. She doesn't want to get into all that with Jon.

"How bad is it up there?" Arya asks instead. "Beyond the Wall I mean. Give me the truth of it."

Jon chews on his bottom lip and looks as though he cannot decide whether to give her the information she's asking for or not.

At length, he sighs. "It's bad," he finally tells her, his voice grim. "I didn't know whether Sansa could bear to hear the truth given her. . . condition," he says, blushing a little. _So he knows about the baby_, Arya thinks to herself. "But you should know, Arya, that wights have been spotted as far south as halfway between here and the Wall."

He pauses a moment and takes a sip from a large mug of something that rests on the table. "And the situation is so dire north of the Wall, if it hadn't been absolutely imperative that the men here be armed before heading north, the Queen would have never agreed to let me leave," he adds.

"Is there any chance of us actually winning this war?" Arya asks bluntly. It's the question that's been plaguing her ever since she received that first raven from the Queen, outlining Winterfell's, and Arya's, role in this war.

Jon closes his eyes and takes a deep breath before answering.

"No," he says simply. Without warning, an image of Jon, and of Gendry, helplessly crushed beneath an army of undead wights flashes before Arya's eyes. Her face crumples, and unbidden tears fill her eyes.

The look on Arya's face must alarm Jon because he hastily tries to soften his words. "At… at least, I don't think we can win. But maybe there's a way? One of the men here – Waters, his name is – is in the forge right now, trying to modify the weapons we use to kill the White Walkers. He's apparently a skilled blacksmith and says he can turn the daggers into spears. They'll be a lot more useful to our cause in that form, no question."

Jon shakes his head sadly, though, even as he says the words. He doesn't seem to be aware that he's doing it, and Arya wonders if it's a reflexive motion for him. Either way, it tells Arya at once that their cause is truly a hopeless one.

"There isn't much I'm grateful for anymore, Arya," he continues. His voice sounds ancient now, as though his soul were as old as old Maester Luwin's had been. And his face looks so weary. "But neither you, nor your sister, nor your brother has ever seen these monstrous creatures and what they can do. And if there's nothing else I'm grateful for, I'm grateful for that."

Arya stretches her arm across the table and takes his hand in hers.

"When you leave with these men, Jon. . . will we ever see you again?" She cannot bear the thought of losing Jon forever, so soon after finally getting him back.

"I don't know, Arya. I just don't know, even if we win the war." He closes his eyes again and squeezes her hand. "I don't think you will," he whispers. "Win or lose, I doubt the Queen will allow me to leave her side a second time."

This doesn't make sense to Arya. "Not even if we win the war? Why?"

"Well…" Jon begins slowly. He scratches his chin. "How do I put this?"

"Start at the beginning," Arya advises, although she's not altogether certain what they're talking about now.

"That's not really possible," Jon says, cryptically. "But I can tell you this. It would appear that Eddard Stark lied to us all. I'm not actually his bastard son."

He looks Arya in the eye before continuing. He smiles sadly.

"I'm actually the Queen's nephew. And her only living kin."


	8. Arbor Gold

Even though this is the first time in more than a moon's turn that Gendry has lain in a bed that was neither a thin pallet on the frozen ground nor a hard wooden floor, he cannot fall back to sleep after Arya leaves the forge.

He needs to sleep. He has a tremendous amount of work to do in the morning, all of it with the queerest metal he has ever worked with before in his life. He'll need all of his faculties about him to have any hope of making the spears he promised Lord Snow.

It's not that he isn't tired. Because he is tired. Exhausted, even. But instead of letting him sleep, Gendry's mind is torturing him, replaying the events of earlier this evening on an endless loop.

Arya left some time ago, but he can still feel her soft, pliant body in his arms. He can still taste her on his lips and tongue. Every time he closes his eyes he sees her as she was earlier tonight, her chest flush with his on the workbench, her fathomless gray eyes shut tight and her mouth pressed up against his, kissing him just as eagerly as he was kissing her.

Despite his exhaustion it's all Gendry can do to keep from imagining what might have happened if he hadn't stopped them when he did. What would Arya have done if he'd touched those breasts he's been dreaming of since he was seventeen years old? Would she have slapped him? Or would she have _liked_ it, moaning into his mouth and begging him to keep touching her?

He's been hard since the moment Arya barged into the forge unexpectedly, fiery as the seven hells themselves in her woolen nightdress and heavy winter boots. And now, every nerve in his body is screaming at him for sending her away when he did rather than taking her to bed.

_You fool_. _You damn fool._

After more than two hours of restless tossing and turning, Gendry rubs his face and stares up at the ceiling helplessly. Through the forge's single small window he sees the day's first feeble streaks of sunlight peeking out over the horizon.

His stomach sinks. With dawn eminent, trying to get more sleep is a lost cause.

He decides to stop trying. His last day at Winterfell needs to be productive. Torturing himself with thoughts of what he desperately wants but can never have serves no purpose.

Gendry groans and reluctantly climbs from the warm, narrow bed where Lord Snow and Lady Sansa Stark graciously let him stay tonight in exchange for his blacksmithing services. He dresses quickly by candlelight. The floor of the forge is icy cold and so he dons his heavy work boots. He picks up the candle on the night table and carries it with him to the forge's workroom.

Before retiring last night, Gendry discovered that it is, in fact, possible to weld the strange dragonglass daggers to the steel bars Rickon and The Commander found yesterday. But it's not an easy task. To his frustration, the few spears he's successfully made so far have all come from trial and error.

But Gendry made careful notes after each successful attempt, and he hopes he can replicate the process more predictably this morning.

Once in the workroom Gendry ties the old blacksmith's heavy protective apron around his body and grabs the large iron poker from the wall. He jams it forcefully and repeatedly into the low-burning fire in the center of the forge. The flames grow, but the fire isn't near hot enough yet for his purposes. Yesterday Gendry learned that dragonglass will not meld properly with steel if he uses the temperatures he normally uses when shaping steel alone.

For this to work, the fire must be nearly too hot for him to bear.

Frustrated, Gendry grabs several armfuls of wood from the pile in the far corner of the room. He throws it all artlessly on top of the flames. To his relief, the fire roars to life.

Sweat already beading up along his hairline from the heat of the blaze, Gendry gingerly picks up one of the dragonglass daggers from the work table and approaches the flames.

As Gendry holds the tip of today's first fledgling spear into the fire, he makes a decision.

If he cannot have Arya, he's going to do his damnedest to make sure Westeros is safe for her and for whomever she ultimately chooses. And for her children. Or else die in the attempt.

* * *

Arya stares at Jon silently from across the table for a long moment, thunderstruck at his revelation.

But he doesn't meet her gaze. He seems incapable of looking at her. He stares instead at his hands as he fidgets nervously with the edge of the parchment still spread before him.

"You're… the Queen's nephew?" Arya repeats in a hushed whisper. "I don't… I don't understand…"

Jon finally looks at her. "I don't quite understand either," he admits. "But it's true."

"Sansa said something when she arrived at Winterfell about having seen your true parents in the flames, but…"

Jon nods. "Yes," he confirms. "A red woman who worships the Lord of Light showed us my parents, in her flames, as they were before they died. While we were all at the Vale."

Arya scoffs. "Don't tell me you believe in that Lord of Light foolishness, Jon." It's one thing for Sansa to believe in something. But Jon Snow – or, at least, the Jon Snow Arya used to know – has always been so pragmatic.

"I can't say for certain whether or not I do," he hedges. "But regardless, I had already suspected I was a Targaryen before the red woman showed me what she did."

Jon takes another long pull from the mug on the table before continuing, as though preparing himself for a long story.

But his story is a short one. "Shortly before Queen Daenerys took the Iron Throne, there was a terrible fire at the Wall. Many of my men were severely injured; some died." He rubs his eyes with the palms of his hands. "But I emerged completely unscathed. Except for… well." Jon gives a tired laugh. "Except for my clothes, which were burned to ash, clean off my body."

Arya says nothing in response to his claim. She shakes her head back and forth without realizing she's doing it. "Impossible," she breathes. Everyone knows the stories of the Queen's imperviousness to fire, but Arya always assumed they were fables spread by Targaryen bannermen to instill fear and loyalty among the conquered Westerosi.

What Jon is telling her cannot possibly have happened.

"I assure you, it's the truth, Arya," he says earnestly. He looks her right in the eye as he says it, his voice steady and resolute. His gaze is strong, unwavering, and true.

"So who are your parents, then?" she asks.

"Who _were_ my parents, you mean," he corrects her. "According to Melisandre's flames – the red woman, that is," Jon clarifies, hastily. "According to Melisandre's flames, my parents were Rhaegar Targaryen…" he pauses a moment and looks up at Arya again. "And a woman who looked rather uncommonly like you, Arya."

At Jon's words, it feels as though the earth has begun to shift beneath Arya's feet. She places both hands firmly on the table to steady herself.

"Your mother was a Stark, then," Arya says, very slowly. It isn't a question. Because there is nothing of Tully in Arya's appearance. There never has been. She is wolf through and through, the very essence of House Stark comprising the entirety of her flesh, her features, her spirit, her bones.

Jon nods. "Yes. Based on her appearance, the woman I saw in the flames could not have been anyone other than Eddard Stark's sister. Your aunt, Lyanna Stark."

"That's impossible," Arya stammers, utterly bewildered. "How can that be?" Lyanna Stark was kidnapped, and then murdered, decades ago by the very Targaryens Jon now claims as kin. They were actions that changed the course of history forever.

Jon shakes his head. "_That_ I don't know," he admits. "But I look nearly as much a Stark as you do – and I yet have no doubt, whatsoever, that the blood of the dragon also flows through my veins. Whether the Lord of Light is the one true god, as the red woman claims, or nothing but a mummer's farce, I believe with every fiber of my being that Melisandre's flames that night told it true."

Arya stands up from the table and begins pacing the small room. "If what you're saying is true – if Aunt Lyanna was your mother – then that means you're our cousin. Not our brother."

Jon nods in affirmation. "Yes," he confirms. "I'm your cousin."

She rounds on him at his words. "Then what you and Sansa are doing is wrong, then," she says, harshly. "She said you weren't our brother, and I believed her. And I believe _you_. But… this baby…"

"Cousins marrying and lying together is not the same as siblings doing the same thing," he interrupts, a note of defensiveness in his voice. "You know that, Arya."

Arya throws her hands in the air. "I _don't_ know that, Jon. And either way, you were raised like our brother." She grips the back of the chair she was sitting in a moment ago and glares at him. "I will always think of you as my brother. Always." Her head swims with visions of Lannisters and of Joffrey Baratheon – of incest and of abominations – and she finds she cannot look at Jon any longer.

"I found Sansa in the Vale shortly before the Queen took the Iron Throne," Jon tells her very quietly. "She was in need of saving, Arya. And… and so was I."

Arya thinks he's about to say more, to explain how what's come between him and Sansa has come to pass. But he doesn't. "And so we saved each other," he says instead, his voice reverent.

Arya doesn't respond. She recognizes that she's being something of a hypocrite, now, given her own sordid past. But she just doesn't know whether she can accept _this_.

"I will be leaving tomorrow with the men bound for the Wall," Jon continues when Arya doesn't speak. "I don't want to upset you or Rickon, or make you uncomfortable in any way." He looks up at Arya again. To her dismay, his eyes are glassy with unshed tears. Arya cannot remember a time when Jon Snow cried in front of her, and her anger with him begins to dissipate.

"After tomorrow, in all likelihood this will never be an issue for you again."

"You mustn't talk like that, Jon," Arya urges. "The spears that Gendry is making…"

She trails off at the look of hopelessness on Jon's face.

"It doesn't matter if we win or lose this war, Arya," he tells her sadly. "Not for me. As the Queen's only kin, she will never let me leave her side." He covers his face with his hands. "I'm her heir. Her _only_ heir. Unless and until there is another."

Slowly, and after another very long moment, Jon takes his hands away from his face. The look Arya sees there breaks her heart and makes her forget her anger entirely. She rushes to his side and gathers him into her arms.

"Promise me," he murmurs into Arya's thin shoulder. "Promise me that no matter what happens, no matter how angry you are with me or with Sansa or with both of us… that you won't ever let anyone know the babe's true parentage." He buries his face in her hair. "The Queen knows nothing of Sansa's pregnancy. You, Sansa, and I are the only ones who know the babe has Targaryen blood in his veins. Please, Arya – promise me you will carry this secret with you until the end of your days."

Arya pulls back to look at Jon.

"If something happens to the Queen before she produces another heir, I will be expected to sit the Iron Throne," he says. "And there will be a line of men more than a mile long looking to unseat me."

He looks right into her eyes and grits his teeth.

"If anyone should discover this babe's true parentage there will be just as many men looking to see him dead. Arya, I would sooner die a thousand deaths than sentence a child of mine to that fate."

The tears that fill Jon's eyes spill over and onto his cheeks. Arya wipes them away with the pads of her thumbs.

"Promise me," Jon whispers to her, pleading. "After I die in this war, raise him here with Sansa at Winterfell as a bastard. Pass him off as a Snow, a bastard gotten on Sansa by some northron lordling, some northron peasant. Anyone but me. _Please_."

"Yes, Jon," Arya whispers back immediately. She nods. "Of course. I promise."

She doesn't know if she can ever accept or forgive what Sansa and Jon have done. She certainly doesn't understand it. But this she can do, for both of them. And for their unborn baby.

* * *

In spite of everything, Arya is grateful for Sansa's presence that evening as they prepare the feast for the men bound for the Wall.

Per the Queen's explicit command, the Starks at Winterfell are to provide one final meal for the men they host before they leave them. It's to be as lavish as possible. The Queen believes a final feast gives the men a much needed boost of strength and of spirit before they begin their strenuous journey. From what Arya's observed to date she grudgingly admits the Queen is right.

Before Sansa arrived from the Vale, Arya and Rickon managed the job well enough between the two of them. But Arya has been far more active, both physically and mentally, than she should have been over the past twenty-four hours. This evening she feels her recent injuries only too acutely. She's more than happy to serve a secondary role tonight, chopping root vegetables and salting meat from the relative comfort of a kitchen chair while Sansa takes the lead in preparing the meal.

They do their best tonight to obey the Queen's command for a lavish meal but the supplies Jon brought from the Wall are running out. Tonight's stew will contain far more water and far less mutton than usual. The potatoes will need to stretch farther than they have in years. But there is nothing to be done for any of that.

Fortunately, there is still plenty of Arbor Gold in Winterfell's stores. That seems to be all this particular group of men wants anyway.

Rickon and Arya take it in turns to bring bowls of stew and flagons of Arbor Gold out to the men, seated around the hearth, as Jon and Gendry instruct them on the proper use of the spears Gendry made.

As Gendry speaks to them, one spear in each hand, and describes what he did to make them, he stands up straight and tall, a proud gleam in his eye that Arya has never seen in all her years of knowing him.

If it were up to her she'd see to it that Gendry spent the rest of his life standing tall like this. She'd make certain that he'd always be proud of who he is and what he can do.

After delivering the food and drink she lingers behind in a hidden corner, watching him. She stands at least ten feet away, behind the men who are sitting in rapt attention as he speaks. But even from that distance Arya, no stranger to weapons and how they are made, can tell these spears display excellent craftsmanship.

The joins between the glassy black daggers and the basic steel bars to which they are welded are nearly invisible. Which means the join is practically unbreakable. There's not much more you could want in a spear than that.

"There are thirty of them," Gendry continues, setting the spears he was holding to the side. "Lord Snow brought us thirty-three daggers and… unfortunately, I was unable to get three of them to weld properly to the steel." He turns to Jon and bows his head. "I am sorry, m'lord, for having wasted three daggers. It took me a period of hours to perfect the technique, and…" Gendry trails off, flushing with shame, the proud gleam in his eye gone and replaced with a look Arya knows all too well.

"Ser Waters," Jon says, shaking his head. "You have done more for the realm in making these thirty than you know. The Queen, and all of Westeros, are in your debt."

Gendry looks up at Jon, clearly nervous. But Jon nods seriously, and Gendry's face relaxes a little.

"There are scores more daggers, just like these, north of the Wall," Jon continues. "Perhaps more. I've sent word to the Queen of your capabilities. She's seeing to it personally that the last remaining forge north of the Wall is set to rights so that you can make more spears when we arrive."

"If it would please m'lord," Gendry says, bowing his head again.

"It would," Jon assures him.

Turning to face the men seated around the hearth, Jon explains that the obsidian tips of these spears should kill any White Walkers they come across, so long as they're driven into the correct part of their bodies.

"The dragons can finish off most of the wights," he explains. "But we have no idea how many White Walkers there are. It's imperative, therefore, that you retrieve your spear from the body when you kill one of them. You will likely need it again later."

Jon pauses for a long moment, letting the men absorb that grisly information.

"I cannot promise you that we will be victorious in this war," Jon eventually continues. "But as you know, we make this sacrifice for those we leave behind." Arya looks up at Jon's words and sees Gendry's eyes trained on her, his face an unreadable storm cloud of emotion.

"But how do we _use_ that thing, m'lord?" the man they call The Commander asks, pointing at the spear in Jon's right hand.

"You stick them with the pointy end," Arya calls out from her corner.

Everyone in the room turns to look at her. She glances towards Gendry and Jon, and sees they're looking at her too.

Gendry's lips are pressed together in a tight line, his expression still unreadable. Jon is beaming at her.

She smiles back at Jon, in shared remembrance of a very different conversation the two of them had when they were children. She winks at him, and Jon's smile grows. The sight of him happy, even if for just a moment, warms her heart.

As for Gendry…. well. She'll deal with him later.

* * *

Gendry drinks his dinner that night.

The food the Starks prepared for them is tasty enough. And the gesture was more than gracious. But their food supply is running out again. Gendry sees no point in wasting what little they have left on a group of dead men.

Arbor Gold they do still have, though, and plenty of it. And so he decides to drink his fill. He's always liked the taste of a nice Arbor Gold, and God only knows when he'll have another chance to try some. A surprisingly small amount of it makes him feel very warm and not a little dizzy– most likely because it's been years since he's such fine wine.

He's grateful for the feeling, tonight of all nights, and helps himself to a second flagon.

He stands a fair distance apart from the other men as they sit around the fire and tell tales of battles Gendry knows they've never actually seen. He watches them and wonders if they know, as he does, that it's all hopeless.

He's so focused on his companions and on the wine in his hand that he doesn't even notice Arya's approach until she's right in front of him.

"I wanted to say goodbye," she tells him abruptly. His eyes snap to hers in surprise. Arya leans against the wall next to them as she says it – has she been drinking tonight as well? – and her long, chestnut-brown hair is loose and down around her shoulders.

Gendry isn't used to seeing Arya with long hair. It was so short when they were children, and now that she's a woman grown she's taken to wearing it up. He doesn't think he'd ever tire of seeing Arya with long hair, loose like this, but he also knows he won't have the chance to test this theory.

He takes another swallow of wine and steels his nerves.

"Goodbye, m'lady," he tells her, trying to throw a wall between them before he heads north. The look on her face tells him immediately that he's failed.

"Don't, Gendry," Arya warns him, her voice shaking. He doesn't know why her voice is shaking; but she doesn't look angry. "Please. Not tonight."

She places her bare hand on his arm. The heat of it burns through the thick fabric of his shirt like the fire that forged those spears, and he bites the inside of his cheek to keep from whimpering at the contact.

"I'm not your 'lady,'" she corrects him. She doesn't pull her hand away. She begins caressing his arm from wrist to elbow, very slowly, tracing patterns on his sleeve with her fingertips as she does.

She steps closer to him, her body now mere inches from his. She's radiating a dizzying heat that has nothing to do with the wine in his blood, and he feels suddenly like his knees might buckle under him. "I've never been your 'lady,' Gendry."

Without another word, Arya grabs the flagon of Arbor Gold out of his hands and downs what's left of it in one large swallow. His eyes widen, stunned.

When she's drained the last drop she throws the flagon to the ground.

"Tell me goodbye again, but call me by my name," she instructs. "Please, Gendry. I want to hear you say my name. Just… just one last time."

He looks down into her gray eyes. The look she's giving him is intense but inscrutable.

Calling her "_Arya_" tonight will likely break him later, when he's all alone at night and north of the Wall. He'll be able to hear her name ringing in his ears until the end of his days even without saying it aloud now.

But she wants him to do it. And this, at least, is one thing he _can_ give her.

"Goodbye, Arya Stark," he tells her quietly, his own voice shaking now.

To his surprise, she leans forward and rests her head against his chest. He doesn't know why he does it – reflex, perhaps; or perhaps it's a combination of the wine he's drunk and his burning desire for the woman in front of him – but he pulls her to him and wraps both of his arms tightly around her.

She shudders in his arms and chokes on a sob.

"I'm never going to see you again," she tells him flatly, into his chest. He can feel the warmth of her breath through his shirt, and he shivers involuntarily. "I'm never going to see Jon again either." She looks up at him then, her chin pressed to his body, her eyes glassy. "Am I, Gendry."

The look on her face is so plaintive. Words fail him.

But he shakes his head in the negative. He won't lie to her tonight. These spears might take out a few of the White Walkers, to be sure. But in the end, there are only thirty of them, and Gods only know how many White Walkers are out there.

"No," he confirms when he finds his voice. "You won't, Arya."

Her unreadable expression is replaced immediately by a fierce, determined one.

"Then let me give you something to remember me by."

She stretches up on her tiptoes and presses a kiss to his mouth at the same time she reaches down between their bodies and cups him in her hand. He grunts against her lips – in surprise and in pleasure – as she begins stroking him, very gently.

His body's reaction is immediate and explosive.

"Arya…" he chokes out, shocked out of his wits at her boldness yet unable to move away from her. He pulls away from her lips and buries his face in her neck as she touches him, every nerve in his body centered in the spot where her fingers are moving.

"Don't push me away tonight," she tells him as she continues to stroke. He's hard as a rock already, his entire body awash in sensation, and it takes every ounce of willpower he possesses not to start thrusting into her hand. He can feel her smile against his shoulder as if she knows.

Without stopping her maddeningly gentle ministrations she pulls his head up with her free hand and tugs him down into a deep, passionate kiss – one he wouldn't have had the strength to fight even if he'd wanted to.

She shoves them both back against the wall to steady them as she kisses and caresses him. To brace them both so they don't topple to the ground, most likely. His arms tighten around her small body as she traces his bottom lip with her tongue and sucks it gently into her mouth. To his simultaneous relief and frustration, she takes her hand away from his length and winds both of her arms around his neck, pulling his face closer to her as she caresses his lips with her own.

As he kisses her back, his hands begin to roam her body of their own accord – down and along her spine, her backside, her thighs – and she shudders in his arms. He pulls her hips flush against his, unable to help himself, craving as much physical contact with her as possible in this moment, and she cries out against his lips, the sound of her pleasure nearly breaking him.

She pulls away after an undeterminable length of time, gasping for breath, her long beautiful hair disheveled from his hands, her black pupils fat inside gray irises.

Her body still pressed against his, she reaches up and starts gently running her hands through his hair, a gesture so tender and intimate he feels on the verge of tears.

"Don't push me away tonight," she says again, whispering. She begins playing with the fine hairs at the nape of his neck, raising gooseflesh all along his broad shoulders. His eyes flutter closed. "Please, Gendry."

He knows what she's really asking him now, and he knows that it's wrong. That he should say no.

"All right," he hears himself say instead. He nods his assent, because he just isn't strong enough to do anything else. "I won't."


	9. The First of His Name

To her relief, it doesn't take much to convince Gendry to slip out of the Great Hall with her that night.

She murmurs the idea into his ear as they sit wrapped around each other on a single small chair in the kitchen, Arya perched precariously on his lap. The hour is late, and they are quite alone, everyone else in the house having gone to bed hours ago.

"Take me to the forge," she whispers boldly, before tracing the outer shell of his ear with the tip of her tongue. He shudders a little and tightens his hold on her. "That way, if we make any noise…"

Gendry nods in wordless agreement and tilts his chin to capture her mouth in another kiss. She can still taste the sweet Arbor Gold they shared earlier this evening on his lips. As she wraps her arms around him and deepens the kiss she wonders, fleetingly, if she tastes of it too.

* * *

Despite the icy ground and the heavily falling snow, they practically run to the forge, nearly tripping over their feet in their haste to get there.

When they finally arrive, Gendry can't manage to undo the lock on the front door. His hands shake badly as he fumbles with it, making the door rattle.

Although Arya is little more than a bundle of nervous energy herself, she places her small hands over his much larger ones and gives them what she hopes is a reassuring squeeze. She leans up on tiptoe and kisses his stubbled cheek.

Gendry laughs a little, but it's a nervous sound. He closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath and lets it out, shaking his head as if to clear it.

After another very long moment he finally manages to turn the doorknob, her hands still splayed over his. Together, they step out of the frigid night air and into the forge.

Once inside, and without warning, Gendry whisks Arya up off the ground, as though tonight were their wedding night and this their threshold, and cradles her in his strong arms. He presses his lips to hers for what must be the hundredth time tonight and kisses her like he'll never be able to get enough of kissing her, making her heart pound in her chest and her knees weak.

Without breaking the kiss Gendry walks them both, very slowly, towards the back room of the forge. To where Arya will lie with him tonight, if he's willing, just as she's wanted to do ever since the night they first kissed in her bed chamber.

She hopes he's willing. If this is truly to be their last night together before he leaves her forever, she doesn't know what she'll do if he's not.

By the time they enter the darkened back room Arya feels about to burst out of her skin with anticipation. Gendry carefully lays her down on the neatly made, narrow bed before rushing about the room to light candles. She can't lie still, and she fidgets with her hands, her clothes, the bedcovers, as she watches him.

"I've wanted this for so long," Gendry murmurs, his voice husky, as if to the room itself and not to her, as he attends to the candles on his bedside table and bureau. He sits down next to her on the bed and picks up one of her delicate hands in his own. He gently traces the lines of her palm with one thick index finger, tickling her a little and making her giggle involuntarily.

Smiling himself, Gendry lifts her hand to his mouth and gently kisses the back of it before pressing its palm to his cheek. He leans into her touch, humming a little and closing his eyes.

When he opens them again the look he gives her fans the flicker of desire that's been pooling all night in the pit of her belly into a blaze.

Slowly, and with her blood thrumming hotly through her veins, Arya sits up on the bed. Without breaking eye contact with Gendry she reaches up and undoes the laces that hold the front of her bodice closed.

He's still looking steadfastly into her eyes as she pushes the thick fabric covering her breasts to each side. She has to bite the inside of her bottom lip to keep from laughing at the terrified look on his face.

"Gendry," she whispers, cupping his face in both hands. She kisses one corner of his mouth, the tip of his nose, each cheek. He's trembling. "You can look at me. I _want_ you to look at me."

He blinks several times and then squeezes his eyes shut tight. He shakes his head a little before reopening them.

Once open, his blue eyes dart downward, and he makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat when he sees she's not wearing smallclothes underneath her dress. Arya reaches out and grabs at both of his hands, bringing them to her bare chest and covering her small breasts with them.

"Oh, gods," he whimpers, helplessly, as her nipples pebble up against his palms, just before she leans forward and crushes her mouth to his.

Everything happens very quickly after that. In an instant she's straddling his lap, rubbing against him as he massages her bare breasts with his large, calloused hands. Any doubt she might have had regarding whether Gendry had done this before vanishes as he leans forward and expertly takes first one nipple, and then the other, into his mouth, biting and sucking at her until she's nothing but a maelstrom of need.

As he continues to lavish attention on her breasts she reaches down and tugs on the bottom hem of his tunic, desperate, suddenly, to feel the heated skin of his bare chest pressed against her own, but unable to focus on anything but the sensations coursing through her. He understands her meaning well enough, though, and he fluidly tears off his shirt and throws it onto the floor. He resumes his ministrations a half heartbeat later, and she throws back her head and keens unintelligibly, grabbing the back of his head and pressing him into her, feeling like she might die if he stopped touching her.

A moment later she's on her back, and he's scrabbling at the skirt covering her lower body. She watches as he fumbles with the ties, breathing hard and swearing, his erect manhood jutting out almost comically and making a tent out of the front of his breeches. She tries to help him but he lightly slaps her hands away, and so she lies back, arms folded, admiring the broad planes of his muscled chest as he works but wishing he'd be quicker about it.

At length, he gets the ties unfastened, and he tears down her skirt impatiently. She sits up a little and helps him undo his breeches, refusing to be deterred when he insists on doing this part himself, too.

"I've waited long enough," she tells him.

When at last they are bare before each other, Gendry pauses. He sits back again and drinks in her nude body with hungry eyes.

"Arya," he murmurs worshipfully as he takes in every inch of her. He gently runs his fingertips along the curves of her body, under the swell of her breasts, down and along her hips and thighs. As though trying to commit the landscape of her body to memory. The gentle scrape of his fingernails along her sensitive skin makes her shudder. "You are more beautiful than I ever imagined," he says, his voice wavering a little. He swallows audibly, his eyes glassy. "And I just… I can't believe we're here."

Arya doesn't say anything in response, not trusting her own voice to be steady. She gives him a small smile instead, and reaches out to take him in her hand.

She wraps her hand around his length and thrills at his sharp intake of breath. Smiling slyly and looking into the depths of his blue eyes, she slides her hand back and forth over him, very slowly, again and again, reveling in the feel and the weight of him in her hand. His eyes roll back inside his head and he bites his lip, groaning, as she continues to work him, taking her own physical pleasure from the pleasured sounds he's making.

When she brings him, at last, towards the juncture between her thighs, damp with need for him, he puts his hand over hers and stops her.

"Please," he begs, breathing very heavily now. "Arya, please tell me if I hurt you," he insists. "I can't – I can't always control myself very well once I start, and –"

She cuts him off by placing her finger over his lips.

"Gendry," she says. "I'm not…. That is to say…" She closes her eyes and worries that she's about to ruin everything. But at this point, there's nothing to be done for it.

"I'm not a maid," she says plainly. She wonders if she should elaborate but decides against it. She finds she cannot look him in the eye. "You won't hurt me. I promise."

She half-expects him to recoil from her in disgust. She closes her eyes, bracing for a rebuke.

But none comes.

He's quiet for a beat, then chuckles softly.

"Well… I'm relieved to hear that, honestly," he admits. "It makes everything a lot simpler." She opens her eyes. To her great relief, he's smiling down at her.

"And I'm not a maid either," he continues, more seriously. "So… I guess we're square?" He rests his forehead against hers and sighs before kissing her eyelids closed again.

Then he slides into her and all conversation ends.

Arya never knew it could be like this. She has no idea how many Braavosi she laid with while in service of the Faceless Men. Dozens, probably. But as Gendry begins to move inside her, and she reflexively matches his thrusts with movements of her own, her soul feels full fit to bursting in a way that's entirely new.

She wraps her legs around his waist as he moves, changing the angle slightly and wrenching an indelicate moan from him. The incoherent sound of his pleasure inflames her, and she begins to speed up the movements of her hips without intending to as she pushes back against him again and again.

He leans forward, grunting, sucking a nipple into his mouth and swirling his tongue around and around the tender pink bud. The added sensation is too much for her. She closes her eyes and she cries out, throwing her head back against the pleasure that's beginning to crest inside of her.

But it doesn't last long. Gendry's thrusts soon become more erratic and more desperate, and he digs his fingers into her hips and cries out her name as he shudders and falls apart inside her.

He collapses on top of her a moment later, a sweating, panting heap.

"I'm… I'm sorry…" he says sheepishly, fighting to catch his breath. "That was… well. Terrible." He pulls out of her, and she shudders as he moves to stand up.

She whines, unable to help it, and squirms impatiently on the bed, beyond frustrated and nowhere near finished.

"Gendry," she begs, breathlessly. "Please…"

She snakes one hand down between her legs and begins to rub tiny circles on the small bundle of nerves where she's neediest. She groans as the pleasure begins to mount inside her again, and she starts bucking against her hand.

She reaches out for Gendry with her free hand, looking right at him and whimpering.

The sight of her writhing on his bed, touching herself and begging him for release, causes Gendry to bite his lip and moan softly. He wraps his hand around his length, despite the events of the recent past, and slowly strokes himself.

He climbs into bed and starts kissing her everywhere. He kisses her forehead, her cheeks, her lips, her neck, her slender shoulders. "I'm sorry, Arya. I just… I couldn't… help myself," he breathes in between frantic, needy kisses. "But. Let me make it up to you?" he proposes, already kissing his way down her neck, and down her heated, sweat-slicked body.

She runs her hands over his back, curls her hands into fists in his dark black hair.

The world soon contracts until it is nothing but the feeling of his head between her legs, his tongue against her core, and she shatters, screaming his name.

* * *

It's well after dawn when Arya wakes again, flush with pleasure and nestled comfortably in Gendry's strong arms.

She rolls over a little, towards him, and sees he's already awake. He's looking down at her with an unreadable expression on his face.

She cups his face in her hands.

"Don't go," she says. She doesn't elaborate, but she doesn't need to. She burrows closer into his side. "Please, Gendry. Stay with me. Don't leave with the others today."

He closes his eyes.

"Arya…" he says, sounding pained. "I have to go."

"No. You don't," she insists. She rolls him onto his back and lies atop him, her bare breasts pressing into his broad chest. She places her hands on either side of him to steady herself. "You need to _stay_."

He gently rolls her onto her side and pushes back the bedcovers so he can climb out of bed. He's still naked, and she can't help but admire his bare backside as he walks to the bureau across the room from her. He begins opening drawers and pulling out clothes.

"This war is unwinnable, Gendry," she says, sitting up. "Jon thinks so, too. I'm already going to lose him. I can't lose you too. Not again."

Gendry turns to look at her, his face a mask of agony.

"You heard Lord Snow," he says. "You know those… those _things_ are already south of the Wall."

He walks over to the bed and kneels by it. Arya crawls to the bed's edge so their faces are only inches apart.

"I love you, Arya Stark," he vows. "And… and I want you. I want to be with you. Not just now, but always. If I don't do everything I can to protect you and something happened to you as a result, I just…"

She cuts off his speech by throwing her arms around his neck and pulling him close.

"I want you too, Gendry," she mumbles. She traces the contours of his back with her fingertips, her heart sinking, knowing both that this struggle with him is futile and that she has no choice but to fight it anyway. "And I love you too. And if you leave with them _you will die_!"

Her vision blurs as her eyes fill with tears. She angrily brushes them away with the back of her hand.

He rests his forehead against hers.

"I have nothing to give you, Arya," he murmurs, so quietly that his words are but small puffs of air against her lips. "Not even a name."

She's about to yell at him – to tell him, again, that none of that matters to her – when he pulls back abruptly and looks her in the eye.

"But if there's even a chance I can make Westeros safe for you," he says, with a ferocity in his tone she's never heard before, not even when they were starving children together, "well, that's something I _can_ give you, isn't it. And I'm going to take that chance."

"Gendry –"

"And if we win," he continues, gritting his teeth, not letting her interrupt him, "then _nothing_ will be able to tear me away from you again." He shakes his head vigorously. "Not unless you order me away."

She buries her face in his shoulder and lets her tears fall freely.

"You don't owe me this, Gendry," she whispers, sniffling. "I'm Arya Stark, and you are Gendry Waters, due to nothing but the accident of our births." She presses a gentle kiss to his neck. And then another. "I am nothing. No one. No better than you, or the men you came here with. Name doesn't matter, a person's House doesn't matter, _none_ of it matters. And I will not have you marching off to die to… to… to prove something to me..."

When she trails off, Gendry kisses her forehead, letting his lips linger on her skin for a long moment. But at length, he pulls back. He reaches behind his head and gently pries her arms from around his neck, disentangling himself from her embrace. He presses one last kiss to her hand, and then walks back to his bureau to resume dressing.

"You should hurry back to the castle," Gendry tells her sadly, pulling his shirt over his head. "You don't want Sansa and Rickon to notice you're gone."

* * *

The sun is high overhead, reflecting brightly off the snow-packed ground when Arya stands outside Winterfell's front gates with Sansa and Rickon to see the men off on their journey north.

They do this every time. Before Winterfell's guests leave for the Wall, Arya and Rickon wish the men good fortune and good luck, and they thank them for their service to the realm on behalf of House Stark.

It's not something the Queen requires them to do. Arya isn't even certain the gesture means much to any of them. But they do it anyway.

It's normally a simple affair. A curtsy from her, a firm handshake from Rickon and the men file out of Winterfell's gates. This afternoon, however, Arya greets the departing men with red, puffy eyes that match Sansa's. Only Rickon, standing between his older sisters, stands stoic and silent.

Jon's goodbye to them is restrained. He gives them each a nod and a stiff hug and nothing more. It's a much more subdued goodbye from her brother-cousin than Arya expected – given how long it's been since they've seen him, given how unlikely it is that they'll ever see him again. Given everything.

Then again, she's never known Jon as a Lord Commander of the Night's Watch or of anything else. To her, he will never be anything but an older brother who used to tease her and rumple her hair. Arya supposes Jon, given his position must maintain a level of decorum around these men that she's never seen in him before.

As the men go through their packs one last time, making certain their provisions are in order before the long march north, Gendry approaches her. He looks almost shy. In light of how they spent their last evening together it tugs painfully at her heart.

"You big idiot," she mutters, trying to be angry with him.

She cannot manage it. When he opens his arms wide for her, Arya is drawn to him as though pulled by an invisible string.

She doesn't know what Sansa's or Jon's reaction to the sight of them embracing might be. She also cannot bring herself to care. He envelops her in his arms and holds her tightly against her chest. His heartbeat is steady and strong beneath her ear, and he smells faintly of soap, of leather, and of her. She breathes deeply, trying to absorb his scent and trying to absorb him, only half-realizing she's doing it.

"I'll see you soon, Arya," he promises earnestly. "I swear it."

Arya wants to scoff at him. She wants to call him a filthy liar. She does neither of these things. She just clings more tightly to him, willing him, silently, to stay.

Suddenly, a man whose name Arya never learned yelps, loudly, in surprise. Arya and Gendry, still embracing, turn to look in his direction.

"A raven, Lord Snow," the man calls out in alarm, a large black bird perched on his right arm. He extends his arm in Jon's direction. The bird bears the telltale leg markings of a raven used by the Nights' Watch in delivering messages.

Jon, frowning, strides over to where the man stands and takes the bird from him. "I wasn't expecting a message today," he mutters under his breath.

Arya watches as Jon unrolls a parchment sealed with the Night's Watch's insignia from the bird's leg. He's silent as he reads its contents, and then pales and gives an involuntary cry when he reaches the end.

His legs buckle under him and he falls to the ground.

"Jon!" Sansa shrieks, running to him, propriety apparently forgotten in her haste to make certain he is well.

Jon looks up at Sansa with a mixture of gratitude, and something else Arya cannot identify, as she helps him to his feet. Sansa doesn't let him go once he's righted, and he clings to her with both arms like a lifeline.

"The raven was from Samwell Tarly," he tells Sansa, but loudly enough for everyone assembled to hear. "The maester at the Wall." He buries his face in the front of Sansa's dress and she holds him close.

"What is it?" Sansa asks in alarm.

He lifts his head and looks Sansa right in the eye. His next words are clipped and precise.

"The Queen is dead."


End file.
